US Finance World

Investors seem to have an insatiable appetite for fixed-income products these days. But which types of bonds offer the best deals?

High-Yield Bonds

Buy

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the bond world. A high-yield—or “junk”—bond is debt issued by a firm whose credit record isn’t the best, so it’s forced to pay a higher interest rate. Junk bond prices have soared 24% in the past year, but yields are close to 9%. Some pros are investing in “fallen angels”—firms making strides to regain an investment-grade rating. One such firm: Ford Motor (F). The automaker has been paying down debt, and its long-term bonds yield around 9%, says Elaine Stokes, comanager of the Loomis Sayles Bond fund, which owns Ford debt. These bonds might lose value if rates rise, she notes, but there’s a “solid story” behind them.

Mortgage-Backed Bonds

Sell

Millions of Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages. Yet bonds backed by residen

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Dividend Dollar asked recently what type of filing system I use to keep tracking of tax deductions. I have blogged on record keeping before when preparing your taxes. My essential point was that you do not have to unleash your inner librarian to be a good record keeper; planned chaos is ok as long as all your records of a certain type (credit card statements, bank statements etc.) are all kept in the same place and not all mixed into one.

I wanted to add a few addendum from my previous post.

Don’t rely on shoving everything in your wallet. Besides making your wallet unwieldy wide and heavy, many credit card slips are now printed on that slimy paper where the ink rubs off quickly. I noticed emptying out my wallet of old receipts that, in some cases, I could not longer even read the amount paid anymore on those slips.

Buy a letter tray with at least 3 trays (this is a slightly more organized filing system than my previous post) We started doing this at work since we were misplacing bills and/or receipts which often happens when you have a lot of people in an office and a lot of vendors. W

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Stocks sank deeper into the red in late trading Wednesday, as a decline in financial stocks more than offset a boost in oil prices and energy stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 48 points, or 0.5%, to 10807, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index shed six points to 1142 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped eight points to 2371.

Speculation that the Federal Reserve will take further steps to spur the economy has pushed the dollar lower in recent days. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six currencies, hit its lowest level in eight months Wednesday.

Investors remained focused on any possible Fed action, as a small handful of Fed officials delivered speeches throughout the day.

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School has only just started, but high school juniors are already planning college visits and seniors are winnowing their lists. To narrow the field, they’ll consider important factors like class size, research opportunities, and the relative quality of the dining hall food. They’ll think about what’s in the surrounding town, too – maybe not in the way they should.

Big city schools might be in proximity to all-night Thai food, but schools in small cities can give students a huge advantage in preparing for a career. Small cities tend to have lower unemployment rates relative to major metropolitan areas. (The to

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Back in January (link) I wrote about my resolutions to beat the debt and loose the weight this year, leveraging the power of focused intensity and following a plan.

One thing that I have observed, is that one goal seems to be perpetually interfering with the other. The closer attention I pay to my budget, the worse my diet and exercise program gets. I take on extra side jobs, and then end up eating on the run. Or I spend too much time at the gym or cooking healthy, and loose valuable income-earning time.

Along the way, I’ve discovered that I suffer from a lifelong gluten intolerance. Gluten appears in nearly everything (toothpaste, ketchup, breads, etc).  I now adhere to a high-fiber, low-carb, gluten-free diet.

Initially, I just went gluten-free, but was running up to the GF bakery every week for a $7 loaf of bread (yes, one loaf was $7!).  But while I felt better than ever, I suddenly gained the weight all back. Upo

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Bethany Condra, 21, was wrapping up her junior year at the University of New Hampshire when disaster struck: She damaged her laptop beyond repair. With term papers and finals looming, her stepdad, a software developer, suggested she get Apple’s iPad instead—because, he said, it seemed “just the same as a laptop.” Condra took the plunge and dropped $500 on the tablet device.

A laptop it wasn’t. Condra enjoyed reading “The Canterbury Tales” in vivid color, complete with lifelike page flips—and she loved carrying a 1.5-pound tablet instead of a computer and a load of clunky textbooks. But typing notes on the touchscreen felt tar-pit slow. Condra had to buy a docking station (another $69) so she could type a Western civilization paper on a normal keyboard. And without

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It’s not easy writing about the short sale of my house.  Or the short sale of your house.  And for several reasons.

First, the whole thing is like a root canal.  The only reason to talk about it is to offer something that might be of use, or of comfort.  And when you do (talk about it, that is), you have to spit out all that blood first.  Metaphorically speaking.

It’s also hard because – short of a few universal truths, including the one that says it sucks – there doesn’t seem to be any specific guidelines or rules.  Just when you read that the banks have it down, your own bank does just the opposite.

I got an email this week from the bank negotiator.

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As if to affirm this new era of frugality, new data from the Federal Reserve suggests consumers have cut up their credit cards and paid down their debts. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans carried $806.9 billion in credit card debt during the second quarter, down 9% from $887.1 billion during the same period last year.

But hold back the bubbly. A quirk of the banking rules has made consumers’ balance sheets look better than they actually are. In reality, says CardHub.com, people haven’t paid off their credit card debts – banks have simply written them off the books. It’s the accounting equivalent of being disappeared: The bank writes off any debt that’s more than 180 days past due, meaning the consumer has made no payments for 6 months. The borrower still owes, but the debt evaporates off the bank’s balance sheet. And becau Read more…