When they issue credit cards, the credit card companies are depending on you carrying a balance. Their profit comes from the fees paid by stores and services that allow you to use your card, annual charges, interest, and penalties. Because there is so much competition between the various companies, several of them offer [...]
One of the challenges of being self-employed is making sure that your health needs are covered. Medical expenses are on the rise and a simple visit to an emergency room can end up costing over a thousand dollars. If you are trying to get a business off the ground, a single health problem [...]
The housing market in the U.S. is still in trouble. Sales are down and foreclosures remain too high. Developments that five years ago were slated to make huge profits have been halted; the weeds are growing where landscaping was supposed to be. It has become more difficult to get a mortgage.
Many adults get nervous when they consider taking college courses in order to improve their ability to get a good job. They haven’t been in school for awhile, perhaps they had some bad experiences in school, and they are not at all confident about their ability to learn college material.
Yet if you have been [...]
If your job seems reasonably secure and you own a gas guzzler, now is the time to consider buying a new car. Not only are car dealers ready to do just about anything to sell cars because sales have been down significantly during the recession, but the U.S. government has a new program that [...]
As a society, we are just beginning to figure out how much the internet can be a resource in our lives. One significant way has to do with finances.
Economic indicators range from consumer confidence to the stock market, from unemployment figures to inflation, from the housing market to oil prices, from the price of gold to the exchange rates on various foreign currencies. Given the complexity of this range of indicators and the fact that they appear to go up and down [...]