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Fidelity Investors’ Weekly has a list of the five “must have” books for investors. I have only read one of them (Lefevre’s) and have the Graham book on my “will read eventually” list. Their five:

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (revised 1993) by Edwin Lefevre
How to Make Money in Stocks (revised 2002) by William J. O’Neil
The [...]

The first, as I discussed above, is because they get more interest on an option ARM. Look at the couple from Wisconsin. They ended up with a higher mortgage balance at a higher rate. Both of those items mean more money for the bank in interest. Take that and multiply by the millions of option [...]

That was the question on the cover of the September 11th edition of BusinessWeek (no link). Some of the stories of the people and how they were duped by banks and mortgage brokers astounds me. We always assume that most of the people that buy bizarre (the industry prefers “exotic”) mortgage products are people that [...]

Last week, I highlighted an article on some of the home remodeling products that may not be the best idea. To accompany that article, here is a table on the estimated paybacks of home improvements.
The best payback ratios are on siding and bathroom remodeling. Home office remodeling and a sunroom are the worst paybacks for major [...]

Back in April, I highlighted a service that provided a ton of free Excel templates for personal finance related items. It turns out that all of the links on that site point back to Microsoft. The direct link for the free templates is here.
Whether you are looking at buying vs leasing a car, or trying [...]

I’m up to my eyeballs in work, so we’re going classic today. This originally ran March 3rd.
The WaPo has an article on the future of retirement benefits and the discussions now taking place.
One of the ideas floated includes an automatic IRA for employees that don’t have pension benefits through their employers, either in the form of [...]

Ahh, cable tv. Every idea you have is a good one. And there are 5,673,212,807 (approx.) cable shows (and 2.5 channels) devoted solely to messing with your home, so it must be a really good idea.
Well, maybe not. CNNMoney has four grrreat ideas that can actually hurt your homes value.
Swimming Pool
A coworker of mine just [...]

See, I mention my favorite whipping company yesterday and they get back in the news with something juicy. H&R Block has decided to lower the rates on their tax refund anticipation loans (though, we’ll still gouge ya!) and go into high-yield banking and more IRAS!
After I stopped laughing, I realized they were serious. They say [...]

There are few things that Ben Stein and I see eye-to-eye on. I still love reading his columns because, although I disagree with them, they are well researched and he does have impeachable credentials. When he’s arguing for regulation, however, you know something is up. This week, he did argue for regulation in a way [...]