So, I have a few friends who like to gamble (did my Super Bowl betting post about my friend who won $1500 on the Giants’ safety give that away) but, surprisingly, that hasn’t translated into many games of credit card roulette. There are a few varieties of the game but the basic gist is that you go out, get some food, and when the bill comes, everyone throws in a credit card. The server takes out cards, one by one with a lot of drama, and the last one in there pays the bill. The last time I played was a few weeks ago at a local bar, it was only four people, it was really really exciting, and it was really really awesome when my friend Drew lost.

Hey Drew – thanks for the oysters, beer, and dinner!

What do you think about credit card roulette? Stupid and silly? Or should I have to claim that win on my taxes?

(Photo: stoneflower)

Obama has spent the latter half of his first term with a more populist tone. Some believe that Tea Party pressure as well as the Occupy Wall Street movement have brought the country’s attention to the reported 1%, the country’s wealthiest people. As Obama tries to appeal to the other 99%, he has taken on the idea of the Buffett Tax.

Warren Buffett, in a now well known New York Times Op Ed Piece believes that he and other high net worth people like him, should pay more tax than current laws require. He says that his 15% tax rate is lower than his secretary’s tax rate.

At the 2012 State of the Union address President Obama invited Buffett’s secretary to the speech where he again mentioned the Buffett rule which he now calls the Millionaire Tax. He laid out some bold plans for making the nation’s wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes.

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You know about the Dollar and the Euro. You may even know about the Peso, the Yuan, and the Pound but you have probably never heard of the Bay Bucks or Ithaca Hours. These two strange sounding names are examples of the local currencies that some communities are printing in order to revitalize their local economies.

Most local currencies are based on service. Just like traditional dollars, you can earn local currency by performing a service or selling goods in your local community. By setting up a type of bartering system, a local currency serves as a type of trade barrier. This not only allows for compensation to those who may have otherwise not had a traditional job, it also keeps more local economic activity in the community since the currency is worthless outside of the local area. Still don’t understand? Here are a few of the local currencies in circulation right now.

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With the United States Postal Service hemorrhaging money, it’s easy to get confused as to the current price of a postage stamp.

The current price is 45 cents.

This is the price of a first-class letter weighing no more than 1 ounce. If the weight is no more than 2 ounces, the price is 65 cents. No more than 3 ounces and we’re talking eight five cents. Postcards cost 32 cents. If you purchased a First Class Forever stamp, you don’t have to worry about the current stamp price because that will always cover letters weighing no more than 1 ounce.

The last postage rate increase was on January 22nd, 2012.

(Photo: queen_of_subtle)

You don’t have to be rich, like many of the presidential candidates seem to be, in order to find some great tax benefits. Indeed, some of the very ways that candidates like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney reduce their tax liability are available to the rest of us “ordinary” folks.

Kiplinger recently offered some interesting tips about what you can do to improve your situation in terms of taxes by taking cues from Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Some of the suggestions include:
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Ever since I signed up Netflix, the number of movies I’ve rented has gone down significantly. When I do, it’s usually from a Redbox kiosk. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I rented a movie that wasn’t from a Redbox (it was probably in high school, when Blockbuster still existed and was charging $4.99 a night!). More recently, I’ve been looking into Redbox again since Netflix changed their pricing structure and we opted to get only the Instant offerings, which usually don’t include new release DVDs.

We used Redbox a lot because we knew it was easy to find Redbox promotion codes. Even if we didn’t have a promo code, movies are only a dollar a day and we have multiple kiosks in the area, some within walking distance. Even if they are just a dollar a day, there’s something fun about getting it for free. I’ll explain how you can still get movies for free off Redbox.

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If you’re a do it yourself investor, you probably know a thing or two about stock selection but might not have given much thought to the tax implications of your investment actions. You should never pick investment products with the tax advantage as your primary reason. A quality investment product trumps tax advantages any day of the week but part of making money as an investor is to position it in the best way possible to keep the IRS’ hands off of it.

If all of your investment capital is kept in a single brokerage account there are likely better ways to make your money work harder for you. You may want to consider setting up a Roth IRA but let’s assume that you set up a traditional IRA that allows you to forego paying taxes on that money until you retire. Knowing that, we want to keep our realized gainers in or IRA and our unrealized gainers in our brokerage account. Here’s how to use it to keep more money out of the hands of Uncle Sam and in your account.

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One of the issues that has been coming up lately in the world of finances is that of consumers who are “unbanked.” The unbanked are those who do not use banking services. They don’t keep their money at regular financial institutions, and they may not be interested in getting an account for various reasons, ranging from being unable to maintain a high minimum to all of the fees.

However, it becomes necessary for many to interact with some sort of financial services provider, since many of the unbanked still have paychecks to cash. Some of the options available to the unbanked, though, are not very palatable.

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If you’ve done enough research about credit scores, you’ve probably heard the term “soft credit check” and “hard credit check.” They’re sometimes referred to as “soft pulls” or “hard pulls,” but the terms mean the same thing. A soft credit check is any check of your credit score or report that doesn’t affect your score.

It’s soft because it doesn’t hurt, things that hurt are hard. Hard credit checks can, and usually do, hurt your credit score. (OK, I don’t know why it’s called a soft check vs. a hard check, I just made that “hard things hurt” bit up)

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Exchange traded funds or ETFs are to the investment market what the IPhone may be to the cell phone market. It’s one of the fastest growing, game changing products to hit the investment markets since the 401(k). There is an ETF for just about everything and what makes them so popular is their relative low cost. Never before could you invest in mutual fund like products at a fraction of the mutual fund cost.

For most retail investors, they know of some of the more popular ETFs like the SPDR S&P 500 or the SPDR Gold Shares with the really cool vault full of Gold in an undisclosed location in the UK. What they don’t know about is the less flashy but equally important bond ETFs. Fixed income may not be exciting to watch but a large portion of the gains in a long term portfolio come from fixed income products or dividend paying stocks. Here’s how to add Bond ETFs to your portfolio.

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