By BARBARA KIVIAT While folks financing a house or carrying loads of credit-card debt are mourning the end of the lowest interest rates in 46 years, savers who have been stressing over paltry yields on cash investments are partying in response to the Fed’s quarter-point…
Ulysses Torassa, Chronicle Staff Writer Making extra payments against your mortgage is a time-tested way to pay off your house early and can save an enormous amount of interest over the life of a typical home loan. With 80 to 90 percent of initial mortgage…
By ELIZABETH HARRIS HEN you need financial help and have limited means, paying for advice may seem beyond reach. But getting professional guidance doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Clearly, many financial advisers won’t take on clients who aren’t already rich. In a recent survey,…
By ELEANOR LAISE March 28, 2004 If anyone can make longevity sound like an affliction, it’s a financial planner. Many will tell you that you run the risk of outliving your retirement nest egg. Assuming you retire at 65, “there’s a good chance your assets will have…
By ELIZABETH HARRIS SMARTMONEY Got $50? Then do yourself a favor, mutual-fund investors. Sign up for an automatic investment plan. These plans force you to save money before you spend it. And they create another good habit, because they use a tried-and-true investing strategy known…
-By John Shipman, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5171; john.shipman@dowjones.com (Kathy Chu, Yuka Hayashi, Jane Kim and Kaja Whitehouse contributed to this article.) NEW YORK — The impact of the mutual-fund probe may finally be hitting home on Main Street. Since New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer…
Sandra Block and John Waggoner. USA TODAY Managing your money; Every Friday The Dow Jones industrial average is up 17% since the beginning of the year. The Nasdaq, where many technology stocks dwell, is up 46%. The stock market is rocking. You’re tempted to join the…
Jim Hopkins. SAN FRANCISCO — Two years ago, Nick and Sloane Morgan were typical investors. They had 75% of their assets in stocks, 25% in real estate and saved about 10% a month. Following the stock market’s dive, they’ve done a 180-degree turn. Undaunted by…
Daniel S. Levine Some people are the shy and retiring type. I think of myself as the shy of retiring type. The phrase “New York Minute” aptly describes how quickly I would stop working if I won a lottery, was remembered fondly in the will…
The Internet is filled with useful tax-planning tools — as well as plenty of tax-shelter scams By RIVA RICHMOND Plotting how to pay less in taxes is an age-old pursuit. Today the modern pursuit of surfing the Internet can help — to a point. A…