Money market mutual funds are not the same as savings accounts. A lot of people don’t understand that, and now the SEC wants to make it clear.
Planning
Hey, Education Secretary Duncan, Let’s Teach Kids About Money (Not Just Talk About It)
Speaking to a White House advisory group this week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan highlighted the need for schools to begin teaching students about personal finance as early as kindergarten. He’s dead on. But what’s he …
Sex Change Surgery Is Now Tax Deductible
The Internal Revenue Service isn’t going to fight people any longer who want to deduct the cost of gender reassignment surgery from their taxes.
Talk About ‘Old Money’: Old Folks Got Richer, Young People Much Poorer Over the Years
We’ve all heard of how the rich have gotten richer over the past several decades—the “great divergence,” as it’s been called, in which a small portion of the population has garnered an increasingly outsized percentage of net …
An Ivy League Education: Money Wasted or Money Well Spent?
You’ve heard the advice ad nauseum: An education is an investment in your future. But as we all should know, some investments pay off better than others.
Warren Buffett Is Buying. Is It Time to Celebrate?
It’s possible to over-analyze Warren Buffett’s investment moves. But that doesn’t seem to stop anyone, and the Oracle of Omaha’s latest disclosures are whipping up a stir over prospects for a robust recovery.
Why So Many Unwisely Turn Down Free 401(k) Advice
Free advice on how to manage your 401(k) is widely available and routinely ignored. Here’s why you should give it a try.
On Tour Now: The Balancing Act at the Center of Healthcare Reform
The health reform legislation that President Obama signed in 2010 has been overshadowed by our broad economic problems, and its popularity appears to be hurting even among its supporters. In short, many Americans appear to be …
The Weird Connection Between Moving and Prosperity
The popular imagination tends to see migration to find work in a new city as an act of desperation. After all, what’s more frightening than leaving one’s friends, family and community behind to seek one’s fortune elsewhere, a …
It’s Back, not a Moment Too Soon: The 401(k) Match
When times got lean three years ago, a host of companies stopped matching employee 401(k) contributions and you had to wonder if the benefit would ever be restored. Temporary measures that pad the bottom line have a way of sticking around – like the toll on a bridge that has long since been paid for.
College Graduates Face Record-High Debt In the Age of Record-High Unemployment
The news just keeps getting worse for college graduates. According to a report out today from the Project on Student Debt, college seniors who graduated with student loans in 2010 owed an average of $25,250—the highest level …
How to Retire in a Bear Market
A lot of folks in and near retirement are finding out the hard way what studies have long shown: Market declines are especially damaging in the years just before or after you quit work for good.