I’ve been hearing radio ads for gold for some time now.  The basic premise and message is something like
The dollar is going down the tubes.  It’s lost 40% of its value in the last few years, and we’ll be facing massive inflation soon.  You need to own GOLD!  Buy our GOLD COINS NOW!
What do [...]

Posted in Finance, Social, Society 3 Comments »

I was reading up on carbon offsets – buying, selling, etc. – and got to thinking that I could let people pay me to not pollute.  I’m not sure I pollute all that much, but certainly between my wife and I we create *something*.  So I’ll stop, or reduce my footprint as it were, for [...]

Posted in Energy, Finance, Ideas, Society 3 Comments »

This link
from the UK’s Daily Mail talks about a credit card company’s plans to
’shut off’ 160,000 customers’ card because of ‘overspending’.

A banking giant is banning 160,000 debt-ridden customers from using
their credit cards. They will receive letters in the next few days
warning them their Egg credit cards will stop working in 35 days’
time…. They are being [...]

Posted in Business, Finance 3 Comments »

Wow – I was just blown away reading this story @ Yahoo this morning.  Debit cards you can use against your 401k.  Borrowing against your 401k has traditionally been a ‘last resort’, because if you didn’t repay it within 60 days of leaving a company, you had to count it as regular income, pay tax, [...]

Posted in Finance, Investing, Money, Personal No Comments »

I just recently heard that Gary Coleman had done commercials for “cashcall.com”.  I was not too surprised, but then bothered to watch the ad.  I was horrified.  The fine print mentions that “the APR for a typical $2600 loan is 99.25%”.  99%.  So to borrow $2600 I’d need to pay $5200 in one year.  I [...]

Posted in Finance 1 Comment »

So, being a bit of a personal finance junkie for a couple years, I was anxious to see the movie “Maxed Out“.  I’d heard about the movie at the start of 2006, and had been waiting for the DVD since then.  It seemed like it should have been out much earlier – having the DVD [...]

Posted in Finance, Personal 1 Comment »

I just finished the audio book version of “The Little Book That Beats The Market” from Joel Greenblatt.  It certainly sounds compelling, and I’m interested in trying it out.  As opposed to ‘trading’ strategies, which you can usually verify within a few days or weeks at most, this is a moderately long term approach, taking [...]

Posted in Book, Business, Finance, Ideas, Investing No Comments »