US Finance World

When purchasing a new car these days most people find out all they need to know on the Internet such as dealer invoice prices and the holdback the dealer receives. When you are ready to buy your next new car, there are some things the dealer won’t tell you and other things you can use to your advantage. Jean Scheid an former auto dealer in New Mexico explains the best way to buy that automobile and what to negotiate with the dealer.

So you want that SUV and the Internet says the dealer paid $25,000 for it, so what should you pay? Certainly not $25,000, you should pay much less. Beyond the dealer’s cost of $25K, there are hidden dollars in that dealer invoice that the dealer will realize but you’ll never see. For instance:

• Holdback – Ask to see the invoice and under the “description” of the vehicle, you’ll see the letters “HB.” This number may appear as 75000.

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Couponing is the practice of using manufacturer’s coupons to save money on the items you buy the most at the grocery store. While most people have now gone to using coupon codes at their favorite online retailers, there is still money to be saved through traditional clipping. There’s even a new twist, with e-coupons.

Sources for Coupons

First and foremost, there’s your local newspaper. Sunday’s ads are usually the best, packed full of different coupon inserts. Most local newspaper systems offer a subscription for just the weekend, if not a Sunday only option, to help you ensure you get all the coupons. Don’t forget magazines you regularly read as well. You may be able to find out what coupons are in what magazine by doing a little research online so you don’t spend money buying a bunch of magazines.

After the local paper, try online. There are many different coupon sites that offer free printable coupons for your local area, based on zip code.

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With so many recent changes to the tax code and April 15 approaching, now may be a good time to get focused on tax planning and your broader financial goals.

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There are many different club stores available, including Sam’s Club, BJ’s, Costco, and more. All of these stores want you to believe that they can offer you significant savings on your food purchases. However, there are some trade offs when purchasing groceries at a club or discount store. This article will describe the advantages and disadvantages of discount store shopping as well as outline a strategy so that you can make the most of these opportunities.

Buying Groceries in Bulk

While it might be obvious that a club store can save you money, it is not always obvious how it will do that. Many club stores sell the same brand-name items that you will find at a regular grocery store, however, they are often packaged in larger quantities. For example, instead of buying one can of green beans, you will buy a package of six cans of green beans all bundled together. This is great if you have favorite foods that you eat in large quantities anyways.

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As the stock market crashed in late 2008 and early 2009, many stock options held by managements of both large and small caps were made worthless. Even today, after most stocks have rallied strongly from their lows, many stocks still remain far below their pre-recession levels, effectively reducing (after-the-fact) salaries of managements during the boom years. But it appears that many managements will not take these salary hits lying down, choosing instead to make up for them by increasing option payouts now that prices are recovering.

Consider Quest Capital (QCC), which offers financing to commercial and residential builders. On a single day in January 2010, the company issued over 4 million options to management, more than it has in the previous five years! Has management done such a great job that it deserved more options this year than it has ever before deserved?

What is happening here appears to be a sidestep of the extremely unpopular practice of re-pricing options.

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Top News

• ADP: ADP announces that private employers cut 23,000 jobs in March
• RDS.A, COP, BP: New administration plan would allow oil and gas exploration off the coast of Virginia
• BA, T, MMM, CAT: Boeing and other blue chips to take charges against first-quarter earnings due to health reform

WSJ

• AAPL, T, VZ, GOOG, VOD: The real winner of AT&T vs.

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Bank Failure Friday closed four more private banks. The FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund haunts banking. The NAHB worries about tougher regulatory guidelines on CRE lending. Restating the ignored regulatory guidelines yet again! I look at the daily charts for Housing, and Community and Regional Banks.Bank Failure Friday – Four more private community banks failed last Friday, bringing the total for the first quarter of 2010 to 41. At this pace the FDIC will close 164 banks this year, well within my predicted 150 to 200 failures in 2010. This brings the total since the end of 2007 to 206, on the way to 500 to 800 by the end of 2012 and into 2013. All four failures were extremely overexposed to C&D and CRE loans with loan pipelines between 88.7% and 100%. Key West Bank in Florida had exposures higher than I have ever seen; 4015% for C&D when the guideline is 100% and 20,216% for CRE when 300% is the guideline.The Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) has now been tapped for $6.5 billion in 2010, bringing the DIF deficit to $27.4 billion excluding the prepaid $46 billion that sits on the sideline for 2010 through 2012. A Read more…

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which I’ll call Obama-care, is now law. It has lots of tax changes, and folks like me will be trying to make sense out of them for a long time. It won’t be easy. This law is as poorly written as you might expect given the unseemly process that brought it to life.

Anyway, here’s my take on some of the key tax changes buried in Obama-care that will affect individual taxpayers between now and the not-too-distant future. I can’t come close to covering all the changes in one article, so please stay tuned for more on this subject later on.

Starting This Year

Tax Breaks for Covering Adult Children

Effective for plan years beginning after Sept. 23, 2010, health plans that cover dependent children must continue to cover adult kids until they turn age 26. This li

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