Keep your online password alive after you die

Posted February 21, 2012 at 1:48 am

by Marla Brill

Karin Prangley, a 33-year-old Chicago estate planning attorney, attempted to guess her father-in-law’s password to gain access to his business computer after he suffered a debilitating stroke several years ago at age 62. None of them worked.

“At the time he owned a building supply company, and he ran most of the business through his Yahoo e-mail account,” Prangley says. “But he hadn’t left his password with anyone, so the family had no way of accessing the contents. We didn’t know which orders had been filled, what was coming in, who the business owed money to, or who to bill.”

Yahoo would only provide the password with a court order. “As an attorney, I knew that takes at least a month,” Prangley says. “The business couldn’t wait that long.” With important records sealed off, the business lost a significant amount of money and eventually closed.

Computer passwords, increasingly the portals to our financial and personal lives, can be sealed in [continue]…

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How to get money and more of it faster

Posted February 14, 2012 at 3:47 am

by Jerrold Mundis

You can have more money. And you can have it — get it — without turning your life upside down or driving yourself nuts. Seriously.

I got it that way, quietly, simply, and still am. You can, too. Maybe only a modest amount more, maybe a lot more. I don’t know. But I do know that you can have more. I’m not doing anything so far as concept and technique go that you can’t either. I just work the simple little four-point program that follows. You’re welcome to it.

Here’s what I do — and don’t do.

Never incur new unsecured debt

I don’t debt and haven’t for 28 years now.

I know: using debt as a verb is unlovely. But it helps to distinguish that act from other uses of money, to be clear about what is actually being done — not spending, buying, enjoying, but: going into debt.

Readers of Get Rich Slowly and other personal finance blogs almost certainly know that using unsecured credit is a bad idea. But I’ll tell you: It’s more than a bad idea. It’s a catastrophe. If any single thing can crush, break, and poison a life, kill anything of value or pleasure in it, it’s unsecured debt, the sustained and mounting pressure of it over months, years, and even decades.

In his play A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen wrote more than 130 years ago, “There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing or debt.”

True. I’ve never seen anyone for whom it isn’t.

By the time I bottomed out on debt myself, way back in [continue]…

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Use ‘snowflaking’ to pay down your personal debt

Posted February 1, 2012 at 1:45 am

by Melissa Batai

If you have debt, you may feel a sense of desperation and a desire to eliminate it as soon as possible. Reducing your monthly expenses and developing an aggressive debt repayment plan is a great start. Depending on the severity of your situation, you may want to stop using credit cards during this time as well.

Even if you aren’t creating additional debt, you may still feel discouraged by how long it will take to rid yourself of your existing debt.

Fortunately, you’re far from helpless. To accelerate your debt repayment, consider snowflaking.

Snowflaking is the process of using extra money gained here and there to pay down your debt above and beyond your planned monthly payment. Ideally, when snowflaking, you immediately apply any extra money to your debt as soon as you make it.

Thereby, you can lower your balances and interest you owe, which can decrease your debt exponentially, especially if you pay a high interest rate.

There are a number of ways to create extra revenue that can be applied to paying off your debt.

Use one or several of these techniques, and you may find yourself paying off your debt far sooner than expected [continue]…

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8 ways to protect your wealth from lawsuits

Posted January 30, 2012 at 1:37 am

by Jason Van Steenwyk

The best offense is frequently a good defense. No matter how astute a business person you are, or how skilled you are as an investor, or how lucky you are with your lottery tickets, it does little good if you leave your assets hanging like a slab of meat in the water for trial lawyers to sink their teeth into.

Let’s face it: America is growing increasingly litigious, and the more assets people think you have, the more tempting a target you will become for frivolous lawsuits.

If you are a business professional or if you own a business, you could be the target of a lawsuit at any time.

You could be hit by any of the following [continue]…

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Best 10 movies for great financial advice

Posted January 1, 2012 at 11:50 pm

“Great,” that is, if you believe crooked lawyers, con men and serial killers

by John Sullivan

Rudy Giuliani makes a habit of referring to “The Godfather” as “one of the best narratives on business management ever produced.”

An interesting take on the bloody crime classic, but not easily dismissed coming from a two-term mayor of one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas whose official title is now Sir Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, KBE (seriously).

It got us thinking of other celluloid pearls of wisdom that translate to real life.

With that in mind, here are 10 films that offer quality financial advice in addition to quality entertainment [continue]…

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How to regain control of your personal finances

Posted December 15, 2011 at 1:55 am

by J.D. Roth

Everywhere I turn, I see tales of financial doom and gloom. The stock market is crashing! The dollar is inflating! Oil is peaking and homes are foreclosing! If you listen to the breathless media, it’s 2008 all over again.

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve learned from my mistakes in past meltdowns. Today I’m able to sleep well at night because whatever happens to the national economy, my personal economy is on solid ground.

You may not be able to sway economic policy in Washington, but you can build a strong personal economy by following financial fundamentals like these:

Stash savings. Some experts say you should have enough in savings to cover six months of expenses. Some say 12 months, and others say three. The exact number doesn’t matter. What matters is that if you lose your job you have enough money saved that you don’t have to panic.

[ Editor's Note:  See our Wealth  Wire article titled: Why parking cash is incredibly important ]

Limit debt. If you use debt, use it wisely. A mortgage isn’t a bad thing, and neither are student loans. A car loan is borderline, though, and borrowing to buy a television is foolish. Use debt only when needed. If you suspect financial trouble in the future, then strive to get rid of debt completely.

Continue…

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Janitor stumbles across forgotten treasure

Posted December 12, 2011 at 11:38 am

via Yahoo Finance

A curious library caretaker in the Bavarian city of Passau has discovered a treasure trove of ancient silver coins and medals that went overlooked for more than two centuries. The surprise find is reportedly worth as much as six figures.

Janitor Tanja Höls had often passed by an unassuming wooden box stowed away in an archive in Passau’s historic state library, but it wasn’t until about two weeks ago that curiosity got the best of her and she was decided take a look inside.

What she found were dozens of coins, most of them made of silver. “I had no idea that I’d found a treasure,” the 43-year-old told the German news agency DAPD on Wednesday. But when she told the head of the library in the Bavarian city what she had seen, he soon realized their value.

“This find is a real bonanza,” Markus Wennerhold said, adding that it happened to coincide with preparations for the library’s 400th anniversary.

The library believes that the collection of 172 well-preserved coins likely belonged to Passau’s prince-bishops. Wennerhold suspects that they were hidden there around 1803 during Germany’s secularization, when such church assets were transferred to the state. They may have wanted to keep them out of the hands of tax officials.

Dating back from the years between the Roman Empire and Napoleon’s rule, initial Internet research has revealed that the coins are worth a [continue]…

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7 hidden dangers to your holiday finances

Posted December 8, 2011 at 3:50 am

by Sheryl Nance-Nash

The holidays are one big party as you merrily move from one event to the next. But amid all the good cheer, the season hides a sobering number of pitfalls for your finances, and not just ones that involve overspending.

Here’s a look at seven dangers that can send your season into a financial freefall, along with steps you can take to make sure the holidays are more happy than hazardous [continue]…

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13 smart things to do before year-end

Posted December 1, 2011 at 3:51 am

The holidays are a time for bargain shopping and enjoying family, but they’re also a good time to start becoming a new, more organized you.

by Brandon Ballenger

Maybe you’ve been too busy to notice, but the year’s almost over. So in between shopping trips, holiday preparations, and the rest of the daily grind, it’s time to take a breather and focus on some small things now that might make a big difference after year-end.

Maybe you’ve been putting off these tasks, or maybe they haven’t occurred to you. But with 30 days left in the year, you can take out this whole list doing just one thing every couple of days. And as Stacy said, most of these jobs won’t take an hour…

Review your credit history. Time required: less than one hour. At AnnualCreditReport.com you can get a free copy of your credit history — everything the three major reporting agencies have in your file. Your credit history doesn’t include your credit score, but this is the information used to tabulate your score, so you really need to check it for accuracy. Take 10 minutes to download it, then a half-hour looking it over to make sure all’s well.

Check out your tax situation. Time required: one to two hours. The window for some tax advantages closes at the end of the year, so now’s the time to look into possible credits and deductions – especially if you’re close to another tax bracket. Start by pulling out last year’s return, scoping out last year’s deductions, and seeing if there are actions you can take now to swell this year’s. Can you add more to your retirement plan at work? Can you take a deductible loss on an investment? Make a charitable donation?

Clear clutter. Time required: one hour to one month. There’s no better time than the holidays to turn your clutter into cash, or at least a tax deduction. The best way to approach your closets, attic, basement, or storage rooms is slowly – otherwise it’s too overwhelming. Pick one room, closet, or drawer per day, and spend a few minutes getting rid of stuff you haven’t touched in a year or more. If it’s easily sold, sell it online. If you’d rather help someone less fortunate, donate it. Either way, you’ll end up with more money, more deductions, less mess — and if you’re lucky, maybe even a re-gift.

Review/rebalance investments. Time required: less than one hour. Investments like your retirement plan shouldn’t [continue]…

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Sheltering billions through art

Posted December 1, 2011 at 2:37 am

by David Kocieniewski

As he stood in the opulent marble foyer of a Fifth Avenue mansion late last month, greeting the coterie of prominent guests arriving at his private art gallery, Ronald S. Lauder was doing more than just being a gracious host.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Neue Galerie, Mr. Lauder’s museum of Austrian and German art, he exhibited many of the treasures of a personal collection valued at more than $1 billion, including works by Van Gogh, Cézanne and Matisse, and a Klimt portrait he bought five years ago for $135 million.

Yet for Mr. Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder fortune whose net worth is estimated at more than $3.1 billion, the evening went beyond social and cultural significance.

As is often the case with his activities, just beneath the surface was a shrewd use of the United States tax code. By donating his art to his private foundation, Mr. Lauder has qualified for deductions worth tens of millions of dollars in federal income taxes over the years, savings that help defray the hundreds of millions he has spent creating one of New York City’s cultural gems.

The charitable deductions generated by Mr. Lauder — whose donations have aided causes as varied as hospitals and efforts to rebuild Jewish identity in Eastern Europe — are just one facet of a sophisticated tax strategy used to preserve a fortune that Forbes magazine says makes him the world’s 362nd wealthiest person.

From offshore havens to a tax-sheltering stock deal so audacious that Congress later enacted a law forbidding the tactic, Mr. Lauder has for decades aggressively [continue]…

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