Here's a quick reminder that the US Postal Service is increasing the price of a First Class stamp from 46 cents to 49 cents on January 26, 2014. I wouldn't buy Forever stamps as an "investment", but if you plan on using a lot of stamps in the next … [Read the rest]
Reader Ben shared this in the comments, and I think it deserves a separate mention. Every year, investment consultant firm Callan Associates updates a neat visual representation of the relative performance of 8 major asset classes over the last 20 … [Read the rest]
Index funds are growing increasingly popular. Yet Carl Richards tweets that over the last 15 years, the actual investor return for the popular Vanguard S&P 500 index fund (VFINX) lags nearly 2% a year behind the fund's official return. That works … [Read the rest]
I'd like to make a habit of reading a book every other week in 2014. My first book is The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. This 2006 NYT bestseller has already been well-discussed, but I saw it at my library's … [Read the rest]
It is very tempting to invest in an actively-managed mutual fund that advertises above-average historical returns. Why would you bother investing in the ones with below-average returns? However, there’s something behind the whole “past performance … [Read the rest]
After losing their customers' credit card numbers and other personal data, Target is offering free credit monitoring services at creditmonitoring.target.com to anyone who shopped at their US stores. (Supposedly the data breach "only" affected the … [Read the rest]
2013 was a great year for US stocks, and that also means that many mutual funds distributed (taxable) capital gains to their shareholders. ETFs are hot right now and there are many articles like this one which tout the tax-efficiency aspect of ETFs … [Read the rest]
Update - This offer is now EXPIRED Frontier Airlines is a lesser-known budget airline that actually has a pretty decent nationwide footprint using its main central hub at Denver. (see route map). For example, you could fly from Los Angeles to New … [Read the rest]
Reminder for last quarter of 2013. If you'll earn income outside of your W-2 paycheck this year, you may need to send the IRS some money before the usual tax-filing time. Here are the due dates for paying quarterly estimated taxes in 2013; they are … [Read the rest]
The problem with most New Year's resolutions is that they just take a moment to make but to actually accomplish it you'll need to re-make that decision hundreds of times. If you're trying to be healthier, every single day you'll have to choose the … [Read the rest]
Inside this Morningstar article discussing the choice between a prepaid 529 plan or a 529 college-savings account, there was an updated chart comparing the 10-year growth rates of tuition at 4-year public and private universities, the S&P 500 index, … [Read the rest]
While walking through an IKEA home furnishings store last week I saw a bunch of neat "model homes" that took up very little space. Supposedly every IKEA store has their own sampling of small space floor plans - only a few are profiled on their … [Read the rest]
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