If you graduated college last spring, chances are over the winter holidays the government delivered a nice present to your door: your first student loan bill.
debt
After Bleak Year on Wall Street, Bonuses on the Chopping Block
As Wall Street’s biggest banks prepare to report fourth quarter earnings for 2011, many analysts expect the results to cap off a horrible year — at least by their formerly high-flying pre-recession standards. As a result, …
4 Tricks to Ditch That Holiday Debt
Are you stashing the credit card bills under the junk mail because you’re afraid to see how much you spent over the holidays? Surveys from USA Today and Consumer Reports reveal that we were on track to charge roughly 7% more on …
What Last Year’s Stock Market Says about 2012
Day to day, the stock market may feel like a roller-coaster, but in fact the U.S. is experiencing stagnation with a very, very faint upward trend.
5 Tricks To Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Stick
A new year, a new batch of resolutions! Alas, these promises to ourselves rarely produce long-lasting results. (Depending on the source, nearly nine in 10 resolutions don’t take.) Worse, failed resolutions could be harmful if …
Skittish Market’s Winners and Losers Point the Way
A highly volatile stock market may have given you whiplash in 2011. But as the year draws to a close, the final numbers don’t look so dramatic: the S&P 500 is poised to end the year almost exactly where it began, and about as …
The U.S. Government Bond Bubble (And What To Do About It)
Treasury bond prices will likely suffer a major decline in the next few years. Here are eight high-yielding stocks that are a smarter alternative for the income part of your portfolio.
Why Europe’s Downgrades Matter
Rating agencies have just downgraded the economic outlook for seven European countries. Does that really matter, or is it just acknowledging problems that everyone already knows about?
Can the U.S. Recovery Continue Without Europe?
A strange thing has happened as the debt crisis in Europe has gotten worse: The U.S. economy has, surprisingly, improved.
First of all, the outlook for the job market is looking brighter. On Thursday, the Labor Department …
Two Girlfriends Go on Ultimate Shopping Spree—Private Jets & Tiffany’s, Then Jail
Apparently sick of the workaday grind, a pair of 30-something roommates who are deeply in debt decided to live like the 1% for a spell. After forging checks from a law firm where one of the women worked as a paralegal, the twosome tore off on a private jet with friends to go shopping in New York City. They also rented an …
A Better Way To Pay Off Debts
‘Tis the season … to accumulate debt, and in that spirit we thought we’d write about a pair of related and timely subjects. The first is a new study, containing findings that could help you pay off loans faster. The second is a …
Curious CapitalistEurope
Why the Euro Crisis Proves Stocks Are The New Bonds
Woe to the unfortunate souls still exposed to European debt. The smart money (read: people like Warren Buffett and the world’s more successful hedge funders) got out of it a year and a half ago. It almost doesn’t matter …