The IRS announced last week that the business mileage rate, often used to determine the deduction for business use of a car, will go up effective July 1st. Read the full article

Wall Street is licking its wounds this weekend, no doubt, after being pretty badly clawed by what is almost certainly a bear market. In the coming days you’ll see all sorts of articles offering you free advice, e.g. identifying “Bear Market Stocks You Should Buy Now,” providing lists of the mutual funds into which you should put all your money, and so forth. What should you do? Read the full article

The studentloanconsolidator.com blog noted a while back that new rates for Stafford and PLUS loans have been set; these are based on the Treasury Bill auction rates. There's further information in their Stafford loan blog. Starting July 1st, consolidation loan rates will drop significantly. Read the full article

Over the last fifty years, suburban neighborhoods outside of cities grew for a variety of reasons: families wanted more space than city homes provided, urban crime rates were higher than now (peaking in the 1960's and 70's), and the idealized vision of suburban life grew in popular imagination to become a mark of prestige. Less consciously, perhaps, suburban living was enabled by cheap gas and good roads; the "driveable suburb" within striking distance of city jobs became the ideal place in which to build a home. In the 1948 film, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," Cary Grant played an advertising executive whose family flees its cramped New York apartment for a country home in Connecticut. For Jim Blandings, trains enabled the commute; that wasn't the case for most workers who decamped from the cities. The ability to drive to and from work relatively cheaply made the suburban "dream house" possible. Read the full article

Most middle-class parents aren’t looking forward to the cost of sending their kids through college. For those of you who really want to get a head start, here’s a scheme that will help maximize your college savings, albeit via rather quirky means. Read the full article

One of the consequences of the subprime debacle is a sharp rise in foreclosed properties. Some areas are especially bad off; in May, the majority of homes sold in the Sacramento area were foreclosures. Foreclosures nationwide were up 48% in May vs.the previous year (RealtyTrac.com), and in Massachusetts they were up 32% (ForeclosuresMass.com) over the same period. The rate in MA would have been higher but for a new law that went into effect May 1st, forcing lenders to delay foreclosure proceedings by an additional 60 days. There seem to be quite a few ads claiming that great deals are available through foreclosure sales. Is buying foreclosed property a "can't-fail" way to make money? Read the full article

On three occasions since 2002 the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute has ranked the states on the basis of how well they’re competing in the knowledge economy. For the third time in a row, Massachusetts ranks #1, while California slid from second to fourth place. Encouragingly, four of the top ten states are in New England. Read the full article

Most people understand that the FDIC insures certain kinds of bank deposits, like bank CDs. There's no way to “guarantee” an investment against losses, but an FDIC-insured deposit is probably the closest most of us will ever come to a guaranteed investment. However, consumers are sometimes a bit confused about how much FDIC insurance coverage they can have. Read the full article

Legendary investor Warren Buffett has made an interesting wager with the management of a New York hedge fund. Buffett is betting that over the course of ten years, the hedge fund won’t be able to outperform a passive S&P 500 index fund after fees are considered. Read the full article

The University Of Michigan Retirement Research Center recently published a brief summarizing the results of several surveys of financial knowledge. The studies suggest that many Americans need help understanding financial and economic fundamentals. How financially literate are you? Read the full article

Taxpayers who previously set up their tax refunds to be deposited directly to their IRAs this year will need to be vigilant: Economic Stimulus rebate checks will also be automatically deposited into any IRAs whose owners have set them up to receive tax refunds. Read the full article

In the Boston area – and probably elsewhere – residential contractors are looking for work. For most of the last 20 years, and especially in the last decade, it’s been hard to find contractors willing to do small renovation jobs, but with the slump in residential construction, there appears to be window of opportunity. Read the full article

If you're wondering about the rebate check you're expecting under the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the IRS has a website that enables you to check the status of your stimulus payment. You'll need to provide your Social Security Number, filing status, and the total number of exemptions shown on your 2007 return. Read the full article

Elsewhere I've written about the localized nature of housing markets. I just discovered that there's a very cool resource at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank website that lets you map foreclosure and subprime mortgage exposure for each MA city and town. Read the full article

April 15 has come and gone, so the opportunity to make a 2007 IRA contribution is firmly behind us. As you think about your 2008 contributions, here's a list of IRA slip-ups that you probably want to avoid. Read the full article

It’s wise to do whatever you can to protect your confidential information, but some ID theft losses are impossible to avoid. According to Computerworld.com, four million or so customers of Bank of New York Mellon recently learned this the hard way. Read the full article

How much do you pay each year in mutual fund fees? Investors who ignore this question stand to lose a considerable percentage of their investment returns over the long-term. Read the full article

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