Many employer-sponsored tax-deferred retirement plans, including 401(k)s, offer a unique investment option called a “stable value” fund. If you’ve invested in such a fund, you should take a close look at what's inside – its value might not be as stable as you think. Read the full article

Increasingly in the media, there are discussions relating to deflation: are we experiencing deflation, and is deflation worse than inflation? Occasionally, discussions of the economy refer to disinflation. This will be the first in a series of posts exploring price changes and their implications for investing. Read the full article

Recently I was listening to an IRS webcast on tax law changes (yes, it’s just as exciting as it sounds!) and something caught my attention. I was already aware that people living in disaster areas are eligible for various kinds of tax relief, but I realized that I’d missed an important fact. You don’t have to live in a disaster area to get a tax break; the Heartland Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2008 includes special provisions for educational expenses incurred by students attending college in areas struck by disaster in 2008. This article will be of interest even if you don’t qualify for the expanded disaster relief benefits but are interested in tax benefits available to households with college expenses. Read the full article

For buyers in the most expensive housing markets, the rules concerning “conforming” mortgages have been confusing over the last year or so. Conforming mortgages are eligible to be purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-run companies that together own or guarantee most home mortgages. One benefit of a conforming mortgage is the all-important interest rate: mortgages whose values exceed a specified amount are not conforming and typically carry interest rates that are ¾% or more higher than conforming mortgage rates. Read the full article

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I’ve learned that it's not unheard-of for a professional tax preparer to advise a married individual to file his or her tax return using the single filer status. No! No! Bad tax preparer! Read the full article

There are a number of differences between stocks and bonds. In addition to those I discussed earlier, the two also differ in terms of the unpleasant things that can go wrong with them. The deal struck between Citigroup and the Treasury recently provides an opportunity to illustrate a few more differences. Read the full article

Last year, one of my clients asked me this question. He was well-educated, but had simply never had an occasion to learn how investments work. It struck me at that moment that if he didn't know, then plenty of other people probably don’t, so I decided to prepare a short introduction to the topic. Read the full article

What do FedEx, General Motors, Frontier Airlines, Eastman Kodak, Motorola, Sears and Unisys all have in common? All have announced plans to cut costs by suspending their matching contributions to employee 401(k) plans. Even Starbucks has announced that it may drop its 401(k) match in 2009. Read the full article

It's now agreed that our nation is in a recession. With increasing frequency, recent media discussions about the economy have turned to the question of whether it will turn into a depression. What's the difference? Read the full article

The news media continue to reverberate with details of Bernard Madoff’s fraudulent investment scheme. Sadly, a number of charitable foundations, including Elie Wiesel's Foundation For Humanity, Steven Speilberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Foundation, and the Robert Lappin Foundation, had most of their funds invested with him. The Lappin Foundation, based on the North Shore of Boston, has had to shut down. Read the full article

With stock markets down precipitously and few asset classes that haven’t declined significantly this year, many investors in 529 college savings plans are wondering what to do. In some situations, it may make sense to make a change in your child’s 529 plan. Read the full article

As 2008 draws to a close, take some time to consider what you can do before year-end to reduce your income tax bill. Read the full article

With stock market indices down 30% or more from their January 1st levels, most investors are battered, bruised, and hoping for happier times. In the midst of a generally depressed stock market, there are still a couple of clever ways to make the most of a bad situation using a Roth IRA. Read the full article

Having discussed why having an emergency fund is a good idea and how big an emergency fund needs to be, I’d now like to talk about investments suitable for an emergency fund. Read the full article

American International Group, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, has been struggling to stay afloat this week. Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's lowered their ratings on AIG; these downgrades, in turn, trigger clauses in AIG’s contracts with its trading partners that could require the company to raise billions for collateral or penalty payments. It looks as though the federal government has decided to keep AIG from going under.
Still, today insurance policyholders may have been wondering: what happens to my insurance policy if the insurer goes bankrupt? Read the full article

Master Limited Partnerships are complicated investments in which you share in the profits from an income-generating business. Most often these partnerships make their money in energy-related businesses. They’re publicly traded and offer certain income tax benefits. They aren’t for everyone, however. Read the full article

Last week, state regulators closed down the Columbian Bank and Trust Co. of Topeka, Kansas. It was the ninth bank failure thus far this year, and probably not the last. I've written several posts recently on FDIC insurance of bank accounts and CDs, but many investors have far more money in their retirement and brokerage accounts than they do in banks. Since FDIC doesn’t cover these assets, should you be worried? Read the full article

Although I’ve been slow to notice it, I’m now certain that it’s true: our food is shrinking.

More precisely, the companies that sell food and consumables are putting their goods into smaller packages and hoping that we won’t notice. Read the full article

Today I’d like to offer a simple explanation for how life insurance “works.” This discussion will also lay a foundation for discussing the difference between term and permanent life insurance. The first post in this series, on the reasons someone might need life insurance, is worth reading if you're not sure whether you need life insurance. 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

In response to rising natural gas and petroleum prices, Dow Chemical announced yesterday that it would increase some of its basic and specialty chemical prices by as much as 20%. The effect of Dow’s increases won’t be felt immediately by consumers, but expect other companies to follow suit. Smart shoppers will need to become smarter. Read the full article

Recently the mutual fund industry has introduced a new type of financial product targeted at Baby Boomers: income replacement funds. Fidelity has initiated several of these funds and Vanguard's versions of the same idea, known as "managed payout" funds, were rolled out earlier this month. Other companies will doubtless follow their lead; Schwab and John Hancock are reportedly working on similar products. Like any investment product, these funds will be useful for some people. Consumers should be certain that they understand these funds in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises. Read the full article

At the time of his death in 1976, billionaire J. Paul Getty was the richest person in the world. It's said that he was once asked how much money he would need to feel that he had enough, to which he replied, “just a little bit more.”

Many of the clients with whom I’ve worked feel that they don't have quite enough money to accomplish all their goals. On one occasion, a client who was trying to save for an ambitious goal asked me, “which would be better for me to do – reduce my spending or increase my income?” Read the full article

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that former pro baseball player José Canseco has decided to let his Encino, California mansion, originally purchased for $2.8 million, slip from his grasp and into foreclosure. Canseco, who apparently lost $1 million of his equity due to a decline in property values, has expressed his sympathy for homeowners who are facing foreclosure due to their inability to pay off sub-prime mortgages.

You don't have to experience a foreclosure to regret buying a house. I've met people who weren’t at the brink of foreclosure who nonetheless realized too late that they had purchased houses before they were ready to be homeowners. I’m not going to speculate here about whether the housing market has finally bottomed. But I’d like to offer five questions that anyone thinking about a home purchase should seriously consider. Read the full article

What does it actually cost if you don’t pay off your credit card balances each month? What does a credit card purchase cost if you just make the minimum payments? Read the full article

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