Analysis Topic: Personal Finance
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Best Cash ISA 2015/16, Instant and Fixed Savings Interest Rates, New Flexible Withdrawal / Deposit Rule / Personal_Finance / ISA's
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Good news, its a new tax year which means savers can deposit upto £15,240 into a tax free cash ISA savings account. Now for the bad news, the banking syndicate cash ISA rates remain at abysmally poor levels, despite some demand being siphoned off into the Coalition governments election bribe of the 4% paying Pensioner bonds against which no cash ISA can compete, though of course these bonds are only available to the over 65's.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
How to Escape the Pensions Squeeze / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Money_Morning
Peter Krauth writes: With mid-generation baby boomers just entering the retirement wave, their ability to stop working is a hot topic that's getting hotter. Study after study questions the ability of public and private pensions to meet the needs of retirees.
Financial repression through the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) has compounded the problems of underfunded plans and retirement accounts.
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Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Save it or Spend it as UK Inflation Stays Put 0% / Personal_Finance / Inflation
By: MoneyFacts
Inflation figures released today show that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) stuck at 0.0% during March.
Today all 874 savings accounts on the market beat inflation, and out of these 681* (149 no notice, 79 notice, 243 fixed rate bonds and 210 ISAs) are without restrictive criteria*.
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Friday, April 10, 2015
Don’t Get Sandbagged: Here’s Where the “New Credit Scorers” Are Watching You / Personal_Finance / Credit Cards & Scoring
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: In our talks here over the last week or so, we’ve been focusing our attention on so-called “Disruptors” – the catalysts of change that are impacting everything we do.
And one particular point that I made underscores just how wide-ranging these Disruptor-driven changes really are.
As I told you all last week, Disruptors are already changing how we communicate (smartphones), how we date (Match.com, eHarmony), how we mate (Tinder… or so I’ve heard), what we eat (genetically modified and so-called “super foods”), how we work (Monster.com, Jobr), how we get heat, cooling and light (fracking), how we get around (Uber and Tesla), how we get where we’re going (GPS) – and where we stay once we get there (Airbnb).
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Thursday, April 09, 2015
The Tax Collector’s Puzzle - WAIT: Don't File Those Taxes Just Yet! / Personal_Finance / Taxes
By: Casey_Research
Those of you in the US know that it’s the least wonderful time of the year: tax time.
Hopefully you haven’t filed your tax return just yet. Maybe you rushed it in because you feel ever so grateful to your government for letting you keep some of your hard-earned cash. Or maybe—like most of us—you wait 'til the very last day out of principle.
Either way, chances are you’re leaving money on the table. We want to show you how to get most of it back.
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Sunday, April 05, 2015
Wealth Net Worth - Is $1 Million Enough? / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Investment_U
Rachel Gearhart writes: Last week we looked at a chart showing how much annual income Americans think they need to be considered rich.
This week, we’re using the same Gallup Poll data to visualize the household net worth required to join the wealthy upper class. (This is, again, according to a group of randomly surveyed individuals.) The median number? $1 million.
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Sunday, March 29, 2015
You Must Understand These Two Cardinal Rules of Debt / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
By: Investment_U
Andrew Snyder writes: It’s a tough subject. Nobody wants to admit they spent years of their lives - and thousands upon thousands of dollars - in an effort that may quite easily turn out to be detrimental to their financial well-being.
On Friday, I spoke to a small church group about what it takes to build lasting, liberating wealth. It was the second time we met and I knew going into the evening that it wouldn’t be easy.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Will Your Retirement Accounts Survive The Coming Tax Code "Revolution"? / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dan_Amerman
Suppose that you live in a capital city under siege, that is surrounded by revolutionary armies. And while you don't know the exact timing or specifics, you do believe that the overthrow of the current regime is close to a 100 percent certainty. So you take your life savings and enter into a series of binding contracts with the current regime, under advantageous terms for you. The revolutionary armies enter the capital city, the current regime is ousted, the new regime repudiates the contracts of the previous regime – and you are left penniless.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Best Cash ISA vs Budget 2015 Scrapping Tax on Savings Interest on First £1,000 / Personal_Finance / ISA's
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's that time of the year again when many savers will be busy rushing to capitalise on their use it or lose it £15k cash ISA annual allowance, though having been raised in July 2014 from £5.5k to £15k does not make today's exercise as big a deal for most savers. Still up until this week it had been a case of ensuring cash is deposited in tax free ISA's than in taxed deposit accounts. However, now everything may be changing for many if not most savers following the Budget 2015 announcement to scrap tax on the first £1k of interest earned which with today's abysmal typical interest rates of 1.5% covers savings pots of as much as £65,000!
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The Only Time Debt Is Profitable / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
By: Money_Morning
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: The other day I saw an ad for a mattress store that offered financing, so you can “sleep in peace” on your brand-spanking-new $7,000 mattress set. (Talk about irony!)
Debt is the American way. It makes the impossible possible. It’s seen as benign or even good.
It’s not.
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Wednesday, March 18, 2015
MONEYFACTS on Budget 2015 - Help to Buy ISA, £1000 Savings Allowance, Pensions Freedom... / Personal_Finance / UK Tax & Budget
By: MoneyFacts
Sylvia Waycot, Editor at Moneyfacts.co.uk, comments:
“This is a great budget for savers. After years of being left out of the cold they can finally enjoy the warmth of being under the Chancellor’s new roof.”
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Tuesday, March 17, 2015
How to Grow Tomatoes Indoors From Seed, Germination, Pruning, Over 1 Year - Money Saving Guide / Personal_Finance / Money Saving
By: Sami_Walayat
In this comprehensive guide spanning a whole year, I will show how literally anyone, even a 9 year old child can easily grow tomatoes indoors from seed germination, planting, pollination, pruning and then enjoying the fruits of a whole year of crops of hundreds of healthy fresh organically grown tomatoes that in addition to self satisfaction will save you lots of money!
Monday, March 02, 2015
Child Trust Fund CTF Current Best Savings Interest Rates / Personal_Finance / CTF
By: MoneyFacts
On 4 November 2014, to an almost national sigh of relief, the Government published draft regulation changes that will finally allow transfers from Child Trust Funds (CTFs) to Junior ISAs (JISA). The changes are expected to take effect from 6 April 2015.
Moneyfacts has compared the remaining cash versions of CTFs with equivalent JISAs to see if it is worth transferring…
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Monday, March 02, 2015
Students Getting a PhD in Subprime Debt - U.S. Debt Breaking Bad Part 3 / Personal_Finance / Student Finances
By: James_Quinn
In Part One of this three part article I laid out the groundwork of how the Federal Reserve is responsible for the excessive level of debt in our society and how it has warped the thinking of the American people, while creating a tremendous level of mal-investment. In Part Two I focused on the Federal Reserve/Federal Government scheme to artificially boost the economy through the issuance of subprime debt to create a false auto boom. In this final episode, I’ll address the disastrous student loan debacle and the dreadful global implications of $200 trillion of debt destroying the lives of citizens around the world.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Retire Abroad and Offshore Your IRA / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno
Money represents your energy and your time: the days, the weeks, the months, the years it takes you to earn it, and all the things you hope to do with it.
In short, money is like stored life.
Taxation, inflation, and artificially low interest rates are therefore similar to a needle and syringe tapped directly into your vein, sucking the life right out of you.
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Monday, February 16, 2015
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Pension Fund Managers / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: John_Mauldin
We do not have to look to Greece to find massively underfunded obligations. Here in the US we can find hundreds of examples, willingly created by politicians and businessmen who proclaim they are working for the public good. We call them pension funds, but they’re just another form of unfunded debt. A sovereign bond is a promise to pay a certain amount of money over time. A defined-benefit pension fund is a promise to pay a certain amount of income over time. The value of either is determined by the ability of the government or the pension fund (or its sponsor) to pay.
Monday, February 16, 2015
A Way Forward for Greece / Personal_Finance / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
The current Greek crisis is exposing the elephant in the room - a worldwide problem getting progressively worse by the day. It’s a problem that has plagued developed economies for the last two millenniums. A problem currently metastasized into a full-blown cancer before our eyes: fraudulent fractional reserve banking (see here and here).
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Will Pensioner Bonds Election Bribe Lift General UK Savings Interest Rates from Catastrophic Lows? / Personal_Finance / Savings Accounts
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The recent news for the extension of the Coalition Government's 4% Pensioner Bonds election bribe for a further 3 months to at least Mid May 2015 looks set to soak up at least £25 billion of the savings held by interest rate starved pensioners at an estimated cost to the tax payer of at least £1.2 billion. Whilst the bond is only open to the over 65's, nevertheless it will result in a flow of funds away from the commercial banks and to the government run NS&I that should prompt at least a limited rise in savings interest rates, especially for the directly competing fixed rate bonds such as the 3 and 4 year bonds that could now nudge above 3%.
Thursday, February 05, 2015
When Pro Players Fritter Away Millions / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dennis_Miller
By Dennis Miller
How is it possible for one man to burn through $400 million and wind up filing for bankruptcy, $27 million in the hole? Boxer Mike Tyson made it happen, and he’s in good company among professional athletes. Yet other professional athletes parlay their sizable earnings into nest eggs that grow and last.
Why the two divergent paths?
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Saturday, January 31, 2015
Self Assessment Tax Return Filing Deadline Today, Last Chance to Avoid £100 Fine / Personal_Finance / Taxes
By: N_Walayat
Britians' self assessment tax payers have just 12 hours left to go (Midnight 31st Jan) in filing online returns and paying any taxes due to avoid the automatic £100 fine and interest due on outstanding tax that could easily see the total penalty mushroom to over £1000!. Whilst those who have put off filing returns maybe thinking it is now too late to start need to realise or recall just how easy it has become to file online returns with the HMRC that includes as you go input validation and automatic calculation of tax due.
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