TAX REFUNDS
This morning, tax expert Roni Deutch was a guest on my radio show. First, I need to know what that woman eats for breakfast. She is a bundle of energy on a subject that puts way too many people to sleep. But she made a really important point about tax refunds. If you’re among the Americans who receives one each and every year — and tax refunds have been running, on average, about $2400 for the past few years — or even if you simply got one last year, I want you to think about changing your withholding. Here’s why: When you get a tax refund, that means you’ve been giving the government an interest-free loan. More…
THE DIFFERENCE
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for a story in Reader’s Digest about The Difference. The reporter wanted my take on the down stock market, the Madoff scandal, and many of the other things in the news. But he seemed to be most interested on the exercises in The Difference — and how they were working not just in theory but in practice. He asked me:
Q. Can a poor person really learn to be as optimistic as a millionaire? More…
Money 911
I got a frantic phone call today from Theresa. You may have seen her and her husband Sheldon on Today with me, Carmen Wong Ulrich and David Bach a few weeks ago during a supersized Money 911 segment.
Theresa wrote me originally because she felt like she was going in alone as far as her money was concerned.
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Money 911
Wonder why you should stick to your savings strategy even in a scary economy? Watch today’s Money 911 to find out.
As I listened to President Obama in his first address to a joint session of Congress since taking his post just 5 weeks ago, I was listening in two ways. First, for the music. His overall tone. It needed to be strong and upbeat. Enough with the Donny Downer we’ve met since the inaguration. With our votes we bought into change for this nation. No one expects it to be easy, brief, or anything but a multi-year work in progress. But rather than hearing Yes We Can for the past month, the tone of the conversation has changed to Maybe …. Ummm …. I Think So …. We’ll See ….. Enough. Thankfully, President Obama found his voice again tonight: More…
Larry King
Tonight, I was on Larry King talking about the stimulus package. The truth is, we all needed a little stimulus, since this special episode aired at midnight following President Obama’s speech!
The last time I went to Costco — about three years ago — I came out with two bathing suits my daughter never wore, boxes of snack foods that purchased in a normal size my family would have devoured but in supersize we never seemed to eat, and a surprisingly big charge on my credit card. One friend of mine went in for dog food and came out with a tent. Yet I know others, people I trust, for whom a trip to Costco is a bi-weekly must. They swear by the white fish salad, the bags of frozen shrimp, the turkey meatballs.
I was afraid to get back in there, renew my membership and start again. But this weekend an opportunity presented itself. More…
TODAY SHOW
This was the question posed to me in a segment on Today this morning with Meredith Vieira. You might think these cards are one and the same – after all, it’s all plastic, and if you pay your credit card bill off every month, does it really make a difference? But the two payment options come with different rewards, different identity theft protections, and different psychological effects – credit cards can actually make you spend more.
Watch the segment below:
