One of my favorite quotes is by Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
While Burke lived nearly 300 years ago and couldn’t have imagined life in the 21st century, today his statement is as relevant as ever—on many levels.
You’ve gotta love the way technology and the domino effect work together sometimes. Well, if you don’t love it at least you’ve got to laugh about it.
With all the talk about health insurance and its associated costs, I decided to become better informed. What would I need to know in order to make a smart purchase? What information is out there?
The Los Angeles Times recently ran an excellent article on the intricacies of auto leasing. I say intricacies because there are many factors to evaluate before and during the process. As author Jerry Hirsch points out, failing to check and double-check any one of them can result in a deal you’ll regret.
It’s amazing to me how quickly we’ve changed our habits to leverage new technologies that make our financial lives so much easier. Yet even as we speed along in this great new direction, there are other habits we need to rethink in order to be safe on our journey. Specifically, we need to unlearn certain old behaviors and adopt some new ones in order to protect ourselves from technology’s biggest unintended consequence—identity theft.
You probably know that a debit card (a.k.a. check card) looks almost exactly like a credit card. While it may display a VISA or MasterCard logo on the front, it will also say Check Card or Debit somewhere on the front. When the card is swiped at the register, funds are verified and withdrawn electronically from your bank.
You also know that using a debit card is much faster and easier than writing a check, and that you won’t run the risk of incurring interest fees or late charges (unlike using a credit card). So how is this not the perfect solution for paying at the register? Here are five things that may surprise you about debit cards.
I did some unscheduled research today, thanks to encountering one of my all-time pet peeves in another personal finance blog. The author had written about being a smart car buyer, and a reader had responded with the “conventional wisdom” that says depreciation will cost thousands the minute you drive the new car off the lot.
My immediate urge was to fire off a rebuttal, but then my level-headed side said, “Hey, wait a minute. You’d better have some facts and figures to back up your argument.”
Well, I did the research and gave a short response without getting into too many numbers. I wanted to save those for you.
This is for people who are comfortable with the idea of banking online. If online banking makes you uneasy, then a brick-and-mortar bank may be what you want.
As mentioned earlier, you’re more likely to find higher savings interest rates online. To make your search easier, try using an unbiased source that compares banks without offering a lot of editorial comment. Then when you find a few interesting prospects, you can visit each website and make a phone call to learn more.
At the risk of shorting out my keyboard, I’m going to write about the sorry state of banking and interest rates today. Regular readers of this blog already know I couldn’t possibly have much more to say about the beating you take whenever you pay interest. See my article on earning vs. paying interest if you need a reminder.
That leaves the topic of how much, or should I say how little, interest you’ll be seeing these days on your bank statement.
When you pay for a service, what you’re actually doing is hiring a real, live person to work for you. That living, breathing artist will use his unique blend of experience, training, and god-given ability to do his best for you. It stands to reason that we can’t approach this purchase in the same way we hunt for the best deal on a Whirlpool Model No. 123-XYZ washing machine. That’s why we have one test for product quality and this one for service quality.
