Just a reminder: if your Adjusted Gross Income was $54,000 or less in 2007, you are eligible to file your federal income taxes online for free using the IRS’s freefile system. This especially makes sense if you take the standard deduction and only have income from one or two jobs and therefore don’t [...]

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<RANT> 
According to CNN Money, it seems as though our president is completely clueless when it comes to the effects of US Energy Policy.  When told many analysts forcast $4 gas in the near future, Bush responded, “That’s interesting.  I hadn’t heard that.”   Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the government, does it?  However, that unawareness didn’t [...]

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Students from Emory’s Goizueta Business School and McCombs School of Business at UT Austin were invited a Q&A session in Omaha with Warren Buffett on February 15th, 2008.   A friend of mine was one of the students from Emory to attend.  Several of his classmates took notes and reconstructed the interview for the world to see.   I [...]

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First things first:  variable annuities are poor investments for most people (with a few important exceptions I’ll get to in a moment).  They are usually expensive, complicated, illiquid, and hard to understand for all but the most sophisticated of investors.  Unfortunately, the target of a variable annuity sales pitch is usually a financially unsophisticated middle-class investor who [...]

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In volatile times, investors often flock to investments with perceived safety.  These investments include short-term treasury bills, precious metals such as gold, and hard assets such as real estate and commodities.  All of these asset classes have a place in a well-diversified and balanced portfolio.   Commodities in particular offer an interesting investment proposition.  On their [...]

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The FDIC is looking to bring back up to 25 retired veterans of the Savings and Loan crisis in preparation for a future increase in failed financial institutions.  According to Jaret Seiberg, Washington policy analyst for Standford group, “Regulators are bracing for well over 100 bank failures in the next 12 to 24 months”.  He [...]

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After nearly 12 years as CEO of the Vanguard Group, Jack Brennan is stepping down.  Vanguard experienced a period of intense growth during Brennan’s tenure, increasing assets under management over 6 times from $200 billion to $1.3 trillion.  Meanwhile, Vanguard’s fund line-up nearly dubbled and its average expense ratio decreased by 37.5% to a measely [...]

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To say that banks have been hit hard over the past year would be an understatement.  The subprime fiasco and ensuing credit crisis claimed many victims ranging from bankruptcy for such stalwart regional mortgage companies like Homebanc (one of the 100 Best Companies to work for in 2007 - oops!) to huge losses for such [...]

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Here’s more gold from getrichslowly.org.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been put in this situation.  Your coworkers want to go to happy hour and you feel obliged to go so you look like a “team player” or your friends want to go to a 3-day music festival and you’re afraid of missing [...]

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Many people inherently mistrust government statistics, especially when they don’t seem to mesh with their own personal experiences.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) the official CPI-U inflation rate for all Urban Consumers from January 2007 to January 2008 stood at a moderate 4.3%. Why, then, do you hear so many murmurs around [...]

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