Roundup of Tax Bill

Reuters has the best easy-to-read summary of the tax bill that the House passed in the middle of a Friday night before taking off yet again for a monthlong recess. The bill would make the US borrow another $310 billion in the next 10 years (assuming the estimates are correct) and will cost several times [...]

Make Money Doing Nothing

I’ve written previously of the benefits of using a cash back credit card for all of your spending. Unfortunately, Chase changed our card for the fourth time in four years and this time gave us a Chase PerfectCard. It’s not a bad overall card, 3% back at gas stations and 1% back everywhere else. But, [...]

Often Overlooked Small Business Deductions

Jeff Howard runs one of my favorite recently discovered blogs. He has several helpful tips for getting cash out of your small business without paying taxes on it.
The last idea is probably the best one (and the biggest dollar-wise). Setting up a day care benefit is sort of like a cafeteria plan (some places call [...]

DirecTV gets it

As indicated in my prior post, we’ve been without power for several days due to storms. We got our power back last night (finally) and began testing everything in the house. We realized that our satellite dish was out and my wife called DirecTV.
DirecTV was not only friendly, but almost apologetic about the outage. They [...]

Outage

Sorry for the lack of posts. We’ve been affected by a large power outage and still don’t have power. Until we get it back, there won’t be any posts as I am dealing with issues related to the outage at lunchtime when I normally post articles.
Hopefully, I’ll return to normal posting next week.

Buy Houses Cheap!

How’s that for a Google-bait headline?
Anyway, CNN Money pointed out a way that could let potential homeowners find housing cheaper than normal. The little secret was buying houses that have been foreclosed upon by HUD or the VA. These agencies guarantee loans for people that are in targeted groups: low income, veterans, teachers, police, etc. [...]

A Ford and GM merger?

It will never happen but an article at Breakingviews says that the only way to save the American auto industry is to merge Ford and GM. His main arguments are based upon the fact that a GM-Ford merger would create a giant that could actually fix the two companies problems rather than having to work separately and [...]

More Hybrid Credit Amounts Issued

This time GM gets in on the Hybrid Credit goodness.

GMC Sierra (4WD) hybrid pickup truck Model Year 2006 $650.00
GMC Sierra (4WD) hybrid pickup truck Model Year 2007 $650.00
Chevrolet Silverado (4WD) hybrid pickup truck Model Year 2006 $650.00
Chevrolet Silverado (4WD) hybrid pickup truck Model Year 2007 $650.00
GMC Sierra (2WD) hybrid pickup truck Model Year 2006 $250.00
GMC Sierra (2WD) hybrid pickup truck [...]

How does $4 gas sound?

If you think $3 gas is bad, hang on tight. There is a very real possibility that the conflict between Israel and Lebanon could spread. The reason is that the spark for the war (again) was Hezbollah. Hezbollah is backed by Syria, Lebanon’s neighbor and occupier until last year, and Iran. Iran, of course, is [...]

10 Things to Know About Saving for Retirement, Part 2

Yahoo! has a top ten list for retirement planning. After this week’s story about the number of people having to retire early, it might be a good idea to look over the list and make sure we are on the right track. I covered the first five yesterday. Here is the second five.

Save as much as you [...]