Currency conversion costs from bankrate.com:
However, your credit issuer or bank often charges an additional fee, usually 2 percent, which adds up to a 3-percent total charge on foreign purchases. Bankrate contacted several credit card issuers, and all refused to explain the reason for the charge.
Follow the link for a list of how much each company charges. Until the credit card companies compete on trying to serve customers well instead of trying to trick customers well such articles are extremely important. The companies have more resources to invest in tricking you than you have to try and find all of the tricks they use.
Related: Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool – Hidden Credit Card Fees – Too Much Personal Debt
Give to charity, but do so directly not on calls from telemarketers. Find some good charities. Charity navigator provides statistics and ratings of charities based on how much of the funds raised go to doing the work of the charity versus paying fundraisers, etc.. Telemarketers profit doing charities’ work:
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Then he asked the caller how much money goes to the charity and the caller replied that all of it goes to the charity’s fund, which is technically true. The money is required to be deposited in charity’s bank account – which is how states track charity fundraising – then the charity pays the company’s share back to them. “It’s so deceptive,” he said. “People aren’t going to know that.”
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Borochoff said that nationally, groups that hire telemarketers keep about a third of the money they solicit. The rest goes to the telemarketers, which incur the expense of compiling caller lists, hiring employees, maintaining calling facilities…
If you want to pay people to call you at home while you are eating dinner, feel free to do so, but if you want to give to charity you should give directly to the charity.
Related: What To Do When A Charity Calls – Stop Dishonest Telemarketers
Both of these still understate the size of the deficit. The Bush administration has been adamant about keeping certain costs out of the budget figures. Spending on the war in Iraq, for example, has been included not in budget resolutions but in special emergency spending bills. They are “off budget” in the language of Washington. That spending, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $360 billion overall and $95 billion in the fiscal year that ended in October 2006, aren’t in either of these two budget figures. And Iraq funding for fiscal 2007 won’t be included in the budget the president will introduce next month, either.
Stop Picking Stocks—Immediately! by Henry Blodget. I don’t agree totally with his conclusion but the article is a good read. Definitely the kind of information investors need to know. I do agree that most of the time for 90%+ of the population stock picking doesn’t turn out to be the best financial move. Three counterpoints for why it can make sense: 1) tax smart investing (for buy and hold) 2) investor education (if you pay more attention by buying some individual stocks as part of an entire investment strategy) 3) the Peter Lynch buy what you know small cap strategy (buying companies that you understand better than “wall street” – as a part of an investment portfolio). From the article:
Related: Curious Cat Investment Bookstore including: The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham with forward by Warren Buffett and Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd
Earn more, spend more, want more:
It does seem many people lose focus on happiness and instead focus on buying more things. This is something that I believe is a problem.
When the lowest pay rises, what happens?
No kidding. Other effects are a bit trickier but that one is not tough to figure out.
It is true jobs can be lost but at low rates that effect is very small. As the unemployment rate rises the job losses would increase with similar raises in the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 now is a good idea – it should have been raised earlier.
I make $6.50 an hour. Am I poor? by Karen Datko:
I am no longer proud.
Pride should not be tied to how much money you have. It is, often, but it shouldn’t be. If you act foolishly or you waste money or you act irresponsibly being ashamed is possibly reasonable. When you have extra money, you can waste some and not feel ashamed because you have some to waste. But when you are doing your best you should be proud no matter how much money you have. Buying more pairs of shoes, or fancy coffee or a new video game or the full cable TV package… is not what you should take pride in.
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Economic statistics, like all data, needs to be defined. The way to collect data (economic data or any other type) is to operationally define the terms. Statistics don’t lie. Statistics can be faulty, when those collecting the data fail to use good operational definitions and the data quality is poor (without a definition people make guess…). People can also just make up false number. And people can try to mislead by stating statistics in a way that seem to indicate something that is not the most accurate way to view the whole situation.
The way to cope with such problems is to understand statistics and data. The data can be wrong. So you have to access that possibility. And the data can mean something different than you assume (and often the data is not presented with the operation definitions). When that is the case be careful about your assumptions (with financial and economic data and other data too). But don’t decide to just ignore data because then you condemn yourself to ignorance of the many things which data shed light onto.
In, What ‘Unemployment’ Really Means These Days, the unemployment data is explored. The post does a good job of showing how you can get different measures of the “unemployment rate” depending on how you define what you will measure. I happen to believe the existing measure is best but you need to understand that it doesn’t factor in underemployment and people giving up completely… I believe the best way to deal with those weaknesses is to have supplementary measures that enhance your understanding of the unemployment rate. And too view it as only one measure of economic health. Look also at median wages, health care coverage, hours worked, vacation time…
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In an instant, retirement savings vanish by Bob Sullivan:
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Few consumers appreciate the fact that, unlike credit card and checking account transactions, there are no federal consumer regulations specifically protecting consumers in the event of brokerage account hacking
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Both credit card transactions and electronic account transfers, such as online banking payments, are governed by Federal Reserve regulations that strictly limit consumers’ losses from theft. Consumers who report credit card fraud are only liable for $50
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Despite the lack of legal compulsion, some investment firms have taken to offering broad consumer protections anyway. Both e-trade and Charles Schwab offer credit-card style guarantees. Money stolen from Charles Schwab’s Web site will be returned to consumers as long as the theft is reported in a timely way, said Schwab’s Greg Gable.
This risk is something the government should address. The risk is to the economy at large, as well as having extreme consequences for individual investors. We need to do as much as possible to encourage retirement savings. Not providing government backing (such as provided by FDIC…) is a mistake. The funding should be similar to that for FDIC where member banks are assessed fees to cover the costs of the program based on the risks seen in that institution.
FDIC has done a great job of creating an environment that gives individuals confidence in the system and encourages economic development. Securities Investor Protection Corporation is another possible model but for something so important to the economic security of the country (and individuals lives) direct government involvement makes sense to me.
From the official US Federal Trade Commission site:
Viewing your credit report is an important step to financial security. You should review your credit reports annually (at least) to correct and any errors. Also doing so can be a tool to help you spot identity theft. The credit report site also has a large frequently asked question section with answers to questions like: What is a credit score? How do I request a “fraud alert” be placed on my file? Should I order all my credit reports at one time or space them out over 12 months? (I would suggest spreading the requests out during the year myself).