Scott Burns of MSN Money speaks on old-age poverty: Stave off old-age poverty The phrase that is the title of this post comes from 1963: The shopkeeper of a corner store in a slum looked at the kid and said, “Do you want to know what it’s like to be old?” He pulled a 2-pound … Read more
JLP just sent me an e-mail about a forum that chats about autosurf programs and HYIP programs. HYIP stands for High Yield Investment Plan. Before you get too excited, let me explain what they are. Often HYIPs have as their core website advertising sales called autosurf programs. These are scripts that automatically cycle through websites … Read more
When it’s worth almost 1.85 cents. Political Calculations commented on my calculating melt value post and led me to a neat site called Coinflation.com. This site tracks the melt value of common U.S. currency. As you may have noticed, metals recently have gone up in price sharply. Gold and silver are trading at multi-decade highs, … Read more
If you’re into precious metals investing, one good way to get involved is to own bullion (the metal itself) directly. You can buy bars of the stuff, or buy coins with a substantial content of some precious metal, like gold, silver, palladium, or platinum. The more current, more common bullion coins are pretty straightforward in … Read more
I chatted this morning with one of my wife’s uncles. We’ve both been watching the precious metals market recently and he was the first to break the news to me that silver cracked $12. After we had chatted for a while, he said that investing in precious metals (which I had started to do a … Read more
This Business Week article on Money Central, Build a nest egg without a 401(k), dishes out some advice for young people (dubbed rather unceremoniously as Generation Debt) who don’t have the luxury of contributing to an employer-matched, tax-deferred retirement account. Here’s the advice, with a little commentary: Open an IRA. This is good advice even … Read more
Liz Pulliam Weston reports on 7 Hot 401(k) Trends that work to give the relatively mature tax-advantaged retirement account system more credibility. The seven points, with my take mixed in: Making retirement saving automatic. As in automatic participation for qualified employees; non-participation was a surprisingly high percentage of qualified employees (almost 30%). This is amazing … Read more
Any predictions for future asset values involve assumptions about the rates of return of particular investments. Usually there’s a history to look at — perhaps a very long history of over a century — so you can at least say with confidence how a particular investment has done in the past. Of course, there’s always … Read more