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NYT > Your Money
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Your Money: Mortgage-Free, but Not Free From the Temptation to Borrow:
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| For those people who own their homes mortgage-free, the question is what to do with a houseful of equity.
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Cost Of Living: Listen to Your Statement:
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| Even if the standard personal finance guidance is to monitor one’s spending over a longer period of time, reviewing a monthly bank statement can be just as valuable.
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Recession Diet Just One Way to Tighten Belt:
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| Americans are finding creative ways to cut costs on routine items, forcing retailers to decode the tastes of a suddenly thrifty public.
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A Stalwart of Retirement Planning: The I.R.A.:
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| Financial experts say that one often-overlooked resource for retirement savings is the humble Individual Retirement Account.
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Fundamentally: A Market That Dashes Assumptions:
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| A growing school of thought says that stock markets are acting rationally.
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Your Money: For Many, Thrift Shops Are a Wardrobe Essential:
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| As the prices of gasoline and groceries edge higher and debt weighs more heavily, saving money on clothes, shoes and household goods has become increasingly essential for many people.
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Shortcuts: Pick a Planner Who Can Spell ‘Fiduciary’:
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| In looking for a financial adviser, one thing to ask is if they have fiduciary duty, which means they will have to put your interests ahead of theirs at all times when providing investment advice.
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Strategies: The Odds for a Retirement Nest Egg, Recalculated:
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| Though it may go against conventional wisdom, you can simply pick an allocation of stocks and bonds that you can live with for a long while and stick with it.
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Working Life (High and Low):
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| Jean Capobianco’s employer embraced a controversial strategy, insisting that she and other staff were independent contractors, not employees.
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Your Money: Paying for College Without the Home Equity Option:
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| The turmoil in real estate has meant that home equity — often a fallback for college funds — is difficult to tap, forcing many parents to reconsider high-priced colleges.
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Cost Of Living: Cheaper, Yes, but Only on the Price:
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| The experience of buying life insurance through an online agency can leave one to wonder whether it is worth the savings.
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Fundamentally: A Storm May Lift the Heat:
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| While few people relish 200-point single-day stock market declines like Friday’s, rocky periods serve some useful purposes for long-term investors.
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Fresh Starts: Shrinking the World, or at Least Your Corner:
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| “Downsizing specialist” is a term for a job that combines organizing, psychology and plain old hand-holding.
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Your Money: How to Jointly Own a Home and Still Be Friends:
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| Teaming up with friends or relatives to buy a second home can prove a boon to the pocketbook and the relationship, but only if ground rules are established before the first check is written.
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From Repairs to Exit Strategies, Details Matter:
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| Buying a vacation home with friends or relatives can reduce individual costs and operating expenses as well as divide responsibilities, but there are a few things to consider.
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Market Values: Woes Here. Opportunity Elsewhere.:
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| Despite declines on foreign markets, experts still advise to look into foreign investments as a way to hedge one’s bets against the bumpy days of the U.S. economy.
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Strategies: Picking the Forest or the Trees:
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| The ability to find top-performing industries is a crucial factor in determining mutual funds that are likely to perform best in the future.
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Off the Shelf: So What if $1 Million Isn’t What It Used to Be?:
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| One million dollars is a nice round number to aim for as you plan for retirement, and is the focus of two new books.
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Off the Shelf: When the Splurge Takes Its Toll:
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| On the way up, financial toxic waste was sold as “a new paradigm.” Now, on the long way down, the response is “Help, the sky is falling!”
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The Cost of Living: 2 Incomes, at What Price?:
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| When two people decide to exist solely or primarily on one partner’s income, negotiating the daily issues that arise from that choice can be treacherous.
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Your Money: While Alluring, Foreign Currencies Can Be Elusive:
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| While experts have different opinions about investing in foreign currencies, they all agree that such investments are not for the faint of heart.
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For the Self-Employed, a Year-Round System Will Smooth Tax Time:
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| With April 15 approaching, newly self-employed workers are about to learn an important business lesson — keeping track of income and expenses is part of the job, too.
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Fundamentally: Don’t Paint Nest Eggs in Company Colors:
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| Bear Stearns employees learned a valuable and painful lesson about pouring savings into company stock.
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Drilling Down: The Year of Magical Budgeting:
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| Contrary to popular advice, it may be easier for people to prepare yearly budgets rather than monthly ones.
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Everybody's Business: Time to Go on a Liquid Diet:
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| In volatile times like these, cash is your best friend, aside from your dogs and cats.
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Market Values: Not Everyone Is Cheering Lower Rates:
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| Lower interest rates do no favors for people who receive more interest income than they pay out, like those in, or close to, retirement.
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Your Money: First, Self-Control. Then, Debt Control.:
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| While the financial experts are urging people to pay down debt — particularly expensive credit card debt — that is easier said than done.
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Shortcuts: Speaking Strictly Financially, Stick With the Hamster:
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| Buying a pet is hardly the beginning: owners spent almost $2,000 a year on their dogs, $1,200 on their cats.
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What's Offline: Typing Becomes a Travel Skill:
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| Steps to avoid potential problems with booking travel online.
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What’s Online: Rethinking Real Estate:
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| In more than 300 cities and counties across the United States, residential developers are asked — or forced — to include a certain amount of affordable housing in their projects.
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Some Banks (Yes, Banks) May Be Back in Favor:
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| Some financial companies have been battered beyond reason and now represent solid value, and some long-term investors have begun wading back into financial stocks.
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Strategies: Insiders, at Least, See Reason to Smile:
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| Corporate insiders are more bullish on stocks than they have been at any time since late 2005, when the bull market was very much alive and well.
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Is It Better to Buy or Rent?:
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| Compare the costs of renting and buying equivalent homes.
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The Nation: The Wage That Meant Middle Class:
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| $20 an hour has a special place in labor history. And history is mostly what it is.
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