You may have saved diligently for retirement and managed your money well, but in the end, long-term care costs can derail your plans and quickly exhaust your savings and other assets. According to LongTermCare.gov, average costs for 2010 were $6,235 and $6,965 per month for semi-private and private rooms in nursing homes, respectively. For how
Dogs bring joy to the lives of their owners almost every day. Occasionally, though, some dogs will injure another person or damage the property of others. These circumstances can cause hefty financial damage to those who do not have proper liability insurance that covers their pets.
How to Protect Yourself Financially Insurance can be purchased
It can be a sobering and painful time when you realize that one of your family members requires some form of senior care. Your choices can seem overwhelming and hard to understand. Home care options are available through home healthcare services, and respite care (adult daycare) options are available for part-time assistance if you are
The plunging price of oil has been one of the biggest economic stories of the past eight months or so. Falling oil prices impact many sectors of the economy, but oil production (not surprisingly) is the sector that is most directly affected.
Investors who own shares of major oil production companies like Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum
Tax-loss harvesting is a strategy of strategically selling certain assets at a loss to neutralize capital gains and limit your tax liability. Investors often evaluate their portfolios toward the end of the year to look for opportunities to apply this strategy.
How it Works If you have more in losses than you do in capital
Eike Batista has been on the most extreme financial roller coaster you could ever imagine. Actually, it is doubtful that anyone but Batista could truly understand the financial highs and lows he has experienced over the past few years.
Eike, a Brazilian entrepreneur, built an empire of companies that resulted in a net worth of
Taxes could easily end up comprising a large percentage of your expenses in retirement. Most states have sales taxes, income taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, estate taxes and inheritance taxes just to name a few. It makes sense to consider seriously the taxes each state imposes when deciding where you wish to live in retirement.
Very few, if any, Americans like our current tax system but there is little agreement on how to change it. The fault lines are usually along the same philosophical arguments.
Progressivity – What is the proper definition of “fair share” of taxes? Is it based more on pure percentages, where everyone pays the same percentage
Peer-to-peer lending, or P2P, has continued to grow in popularity as banks become a less attractive option for smaller businesses or consumers looking for mid-range to lower-level loans.
We discussed two of the best-known alternatives for personal loans (Lending Club and Prosper) in a previous article, but let’s take a look at a few of
What do Silicon Valley and agriculture have in common? Not much, you may think… but agriculture and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined. Tech companies see financial opportunities in agricultural pursuits, farmers see potential cost savings and higher yields through technological improvements, and perhaps world hunger may be reduced as a result.
The tech industry is
It sounds like a great idea – purchase a vacation home in your favorite destination and recoup some of your costs by renting the home out when you are not using it. This can be an excellent choice, but investigate the tax issues that are associated with vacation/rental homes before you purchase.
The tax concerns
Investing in the stock market is an inherently risky endeavor. Throughout history, the major stock indices have risen and fallen sharply over both short and long periods of time, leading some investors to avoid stocks due to their volatility.
However, what if you could buy “stock insurance” that would effectively limit your portfolio losses should
Your home has suffered serious damage. Perhaps the cause was a fire, flood, storm, burglary, or vandalism. In any case, you believe you are covered, file your insurance claim, only to have it denied.
Your first instinct probably involves cursing your insurance agent at the very least, and we will not even consider the details
Get ready for another round of battles over medical coverage and payment systems between the government, health care providers, and consumers – or is it really just one continuous battle?
The government has been attempting to switch Medicare payments from the traditional fee-for-service format to a plan that compensates health providers based on outcomes. Such
You probably have insured many things – your house, your car, your life, your family… but have you considered insuring your ability to work and earn a living?
Disability insurance pays benefits if you become disabled and incapable of providing the income necessary to take care of yourself and your family. If you do not
In March of 2014, the IRS made an important decision regarding Bitcoins (including all virtual currencies) and taxes. IRS Notice 2014-21 declared that Bitcoins do not have legal tender status and therefore should be treated as property instead of currency.
For those trading in Bitcoins only as investments, this ruling has fairly straightforward effects. Bitcoin
There have been rough times in the commodity markets, but copper has been hit especially hard. From an early-2011 peak that approached $10,000 per metric ton, copper lost nearly 30% of its value in mid-2011, and after a brief recovery, has slowly dropped to its current price ($2.534 per pound or $5,575 per metric ton
Tax discussions often focus on the largest payouts, typically the Federal Income Tax and the FICA taxes that are taken out of your paycheck to pay for Social Security and Medicaid (among other things). State and local taxes tend to be afterthoughts, but they shouldn’t be – they can absorb significant amounts of your income.
If you have had to do battle with an insurance company to settle a straightforward damage claim, you may be surprised to discover some of the odd things that have been covered and paid under an insurance policy. Actually, a few cases are so outrageous you will probably be surprised whether or not you have
Good news: you finally got that raise. Bad news: your paycheck still isn’t as big as your thought it would be. The problem is deciphering your pay stub; where does all that money go that doesn’t go to you? Don’t worry! Pay stubs are pretty easy to read with some common sense and a little
Dealing with the aftermath of a home-destroying disaster is bad enough without uncertainty regarding your insurance coverage and replacement costs. A full inventory of your possessions can accelerate the process of sufficiently replacing them and starting the recovery process.
Most of us have a scattering of files and information on our possessions, but not a
The recent gains in home prices have helped some homeowners get out from “underwater”, a situation where the homeowner owes more on the home than it is worth. However, there are still far too many Americans in a negative equity position in their home.
Halfway through 2014, there were still around 5.3 million underwater homeowners,
MoneyTips Among the most attractive features of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) are the tax credits that are available to low income families to make health insurance more affordable. If you purchased your health insurance through one of the Exchanges (either Federal or state-based), you qualified for a tax credit or other subsidies if
When you first purchase homeowner’s insurance, you may find that you are paying for a policy with more coverage than your home is currently worth. Is this just a way for the insurance company to extract more money from you? Probably not – your policy may cover replacement value of your home instead of market
You are ready to buy a home, but you cannot find a home that has all the features that are important to you. However, you have found the perfect plot of land on which to build your own dream home. That means you will soon be entering the world of land loans – loans that
The term “market correction” is unsettling to most investors, but it really should not be. If you take the longer view of investing and resist overreacting, you may be able to capitalize on the correction and make long-term lemonade out of short-term lemons.
A correction is generally defined as a relatively short-term loss of 10%
The state of Florida is well known for many things — sunshine, beaches, golf courses and Disney World, to name a few. Unfortunately, it is also known for bearing the wrath of one of Mother Nature’s most fearsome and destructive types of storms: hurricanes.
Hurricane Andrew was one of the worst hurricanes to ever hit
Alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power are considered crucial by many people and their respective governments to combat global warming and climate change. Cost factors and reliability are the primary reasons that solar and wind power have not made larger inroads into our infrastructure.
A study by Charles Frank, an economist and
Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) can be tricky to value, because they have the pricing characteristics of both mutual funds and stocks.
ETF’s, like mutual funds, contain a market basket of shares of different companies, and so their valuation is calculated as a Net Asset Value (NAV) which gives you the collective valuation of the underlying holdings
CDARS may sound like trees you might find in the FREST – but it actually stands for Certificate of Deposit Accounts Registry Service, a method of insurance for very large deposits that is backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
CDARS exists primarily because of the limits on FDIC-insured accounts. FDIC limits for CDs