Its tax season again, and there have been quite a few new rules added to our million-plus lines of IRS code.
Forgiven home debt is now non-taxable.
But there are a few restrictions:
1. There is a limit on the forgiven debt: up to $2 million or $1 million for a married person filing a separate return.
2. The tax break also has a time limit. It only applies to mortgage debt discharged by a lender in 2007, 2008 or 2009.
3. The loan also must have been taken out to buy or build a primary residence, not a second or vacation home. If debt is forgiven on those additional properties, the owner will owe cancellation of debt income as usual.
Todays guest post is about optimizing your credit card expenses and making sure you don’t get hit with hidden fees.
Consumer Reports says that Americans shell out $31 billion in credit card fees every year. However, most consumers don’t even know these fees exist until they show up on their statement. Don’t let these fees sneak up on you; read about these 5 hidden credit card fees that you might be paying right now.
Its the eve before Black Friday. I went to grab an ice cream cone and stopped to admire the lines outside BestBuy. It was 11pm and there were probably 250 people camped outside in the cold. Even the parking lot was entirely full.
Thats one reason I like to shop online at Ebay. Its great for buying new or used stuff at great prices. Its especially good for increasing my coin collection. I started buying gold and silver coins 2 years ago. I’ve bought them all from online retailers like Apmex.com or from Ebay.
According to Bloomberg, Jim Rogers is in the process of getting all his assets out of the dollar.
“I’m in the process of, I hope in the next few months, getting all of my assets out of the dollar. I’m that pessimistic about what’s happening in the U.S.” Rogers said.
“The yuan is the best currency to buy right now, I don’t see how one can really lose on the renminbi in the next decade or so. It’s gotta go. It’s gotta triple. It’s gotta quadruple.”
In Part I, I discussed the various options available to stash my savings to get the maximum rate of return, while preserving liquidity.
I decided to split my savings into 3. The first half while be kept with Bank of America in their flexible 5 month CD currently paying 5.1%. After 7 days, I can withdraw the money without penalty. Not a bad option, since it balances liquidity with return.
However, one of my main concerns is the devaluing of the US Dollar. Its currently lower than its ever been in history. No one knows where the bottom is, and because Ben Bernanke has hinted that he’s going to continue to lower the interest rates, I feel the bottom is still far away.
Everyone should have an emergency fund set up with atleast 6 months of living expenses. As I explained the previous post, the most efficient way is to create a CD Ladder.
However, with rates being as low as they are, there may not be any difference in the interest rates whether you keep your money in a CD or a regular savings or money market account.
I keep all my emergency funds in a regular savings at INGDirect. But after the rate cut, I’m only getting an annualized yield of 4.3%. I know there are better options so I looked around to see whats available.
Even though the markets were down today, my stock portfolio was up 3%. This was mainly because I’m heavily weighted in Oil and Gas Canroys and they were all buoyed today on news of a major takeover. Abu Dhabi’s state-owned utility company, National Energy agreed to buy out PrimeWest Energy(PWI) in a deal worth $5 Billion. PWI was up 30% on the news and all other canroys were up around 5% as well.
On Tuesday, Ben Bernanke cut the Federal Funds rate by 50 basis points (or 0.5%) to 4.75%. While most people may not have expected a cut of this magnitude, they definitely were expecting some sort of rate cut. There’s been too much bad news regarding the economy to think otherwise.
Comedian George Carlin talks about consumerism, education, politics, slave/wage labour, wall-street, critical thinking and the american dream, all in under 5 minutes. His assessment of these topics is pretty accurate too.
[Profanity Alert: The language in this video is NOT PG-13].
During the July 4th weekend I went to Las Vegas along with some cousins. Rather than book 3 rooms in a hotel at over $200/night each, we decided to stay in a vacation rental. It worked out to be less than half the price and it was a lot more fun.
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Car needs repair? Need to make an important trip? Get a payday loan . A $500 payday loan is for people who want to manage their expenses before their expenses manage them.
