Online financial news
Yours, Mine and Ours: Avoiding Disagreements about Finances
Romance is in the air this time of year, but not all conversations come easily for most lovebirds – and differences in opinion about money matters can endanger the chemistry of a happy couple. Though it’s unrealistic to think that any two people will always see eye-to-eye when it comes to finances, understanding one another’s financial priorities and money management style can help you avoid disagreements. Suzanna de Baca, vice president of wealth strategies at Ameriprise Financial, offers five suggestions to guide financial conversations between couples.
1.Discuss often. Money can be complicated, so treat conversations about it with respect. Don’t attempt to cram a spontaneous financial discussion into a busy day when you and your partner are too distracted to have a productive dialogue. Instead Read more…
The ‘good life’ is also a long life
SARASOTA, Fla. — There are, roughly, three kinds of elderly people in America. There are the people who have already run out of money; they live on their Social Security checks. Then there are the people who are likely to run out of money and worry about it. If reader mail is any indication, they worry about it more each day.
Add the two groups, and you have a lot of people. According to the Social Security Administration’s “Fast Facts” book, for instance, Social Security benefits accounted for 90 percent or more of income for more than a third of all retirees. Social Security benefits accounted for 50 percent or more of income for two-thirds of all retirees.
The numbers for these two groups may be large, but they are not visible here in Sarasota, Fla., for a simple reason: It costs money to leave your house or apartment. And cable TV is a very low-cost way to spend time. So the elderly who live cautiously aren’t the elderly you see in affluent places like Sarasota.
Here, work crews scrub down the unused yachts at Marina Jack’s every week. H
Georgia Governor Proposes Modest Sales Tax Reform, Restructured Jobs Tax Credit
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R) had this to say in his 2012 State of the State Address:
First, I am proposing the elimination of the sales tax on energy used in manufacturing, a move that will align us with many of our top competitors. This will have a dramatic impact on manufacturers’ overall cost structure and vastly improve the competitive position of our producers.
Secondly, I am proposing sales and use tax exemptions for construction materials used in projects of regional significance, giving us an important tool when competing with other states for projects creating large numbers of jobs.
A third piece, we are proposing to restructure Georgia’s Job Tax Credits and Quality Jobs Tax Credit programs. The programs now in place was created in 1994, at a time when the competitive landscape was far different than the one our businesses operate in today. We will modernize our job tax credits to better incentivize small business growth and to help every Georgia community compete with their regional peers.
The first two steps are good moves.
Northern Rock sale: The end of a sorry tale of British banking
The eagerness to join the queue to buy Northern Rock never came close to matching the rush to line up outside its branches to pull savings out.
But at least the sale means that the beginning of the end of a disappointing British banking saga has arrived.
Northern Rock stood for all that went bad in the UK’s banking system, as those who should have known better bundled recklessly into a headlong rush to throw money at borrowers, believing that the days of easy credit could never end and house prices could never fall.
Measuring the Year Ahead
Given the abundance of unresolved issues left over from last year, perhaps it is no wonder that the range of forecasts for 2012 seems unusually polarized. Expectations seem to be clustered at either end of the spectrum, with little middle ground. Stocks are expected to produce either strong returns or sharp losses. The question of corporate earnings growth and its meaning illustrates the point.
One of the places many investors begin in their determination of whether or not stocks are attractive is the market’s price-to-earnings, or P/E, ratio. But admittedly, this metric is problematic, since for every one of its positive aspects there seems to be a corresponding negative. For example, assuming fourth quarter earnings projections for the S&P 500 are accurate, the market ended 2011 with a trailing P/E ratio of 12.9 based on its closing price of 1258. This represents a significant discount to the market’s thirty-five year average trailing P/E ratio of 16.8, according to Bloomberg. Ove Read more…
How to invest a college-aged child’s inheritance
My 19-year-old daughter inherited a healthy sum of money from her father’s estate when he passed away. I am not very savvy with the market or investments. I’d like some help figuring out what to do with some of the funds.
First, she is in college now. We want to put about $60,000 in something that, preferably, will not lose money. It must be available to cover school and living costs for the next three to five years (if she goes to graduate school). The money would need to be available each semester. At this time we have some in a money market account, some in mutual funds and some in CDs, but with the exception of the money market, they are losing money. Would it be advisable to put it all in a money market account?
Second, I am trying to determine what type of investment to put additional funds in ($10,000) for after she gets out of school. This would help fund a move for a job, down payment on a house, new car, whatever the need at that time.