Five Fiscal New Years Resolutions for Families
New Years resolutions usually involve losing weight, quitting smoking, etc. Instead, this year use your resolutions to help put your financial house in order. Doing that won’t help you fit into that pair of skinny jeans or improve your breath, but it will fatten up your wallet and improve your financial outlook. Here are five potential resolutions you can make for your family:
Go Without One Thing
Have each person in your family resolve to give up one indulgence in the coming year. These don’t have to be big things, but they need to be things that cost money. Exa
Market Buzz: Downward trend to continue for Russian indices
The downward trend of the past few days will continue for the Russian market.
“The market is stuck in a pretty narrow trading range. It’s driven largely by global news flow, by statistics coming from Europe and US. Their worry would be the potential downgrade of the European seven states by S&P”, says Maksim Shashenkov from Uralsib Capital.
Yesterday, MICEX closed 0.44% down and the RTS 0.05% down. The indices may be restored due to an increase in Brent oil prices of $104 per barrel from yesterday’s $102.7 per barrel.
On Monday, US stocks closed about 1% lower, deepening losses on separate comments from the head of the European Central Bank that it would not be expanding its bond purchases to help struggling countries in Europe.
Business Financing For Government Contractors
Although no company is immune from the effects of the general economy, many established government contractors have fared the recession better than other businesses. That is, in part, because government purchases are not very sensitive to the economic cycles. The US government buys many goods and services regardless of how the economy is doing. However, that does not mean that government contractors have it easy. Not at all. The government procurement process is not without it’s challenges and business owners still need to juggle the different demands on their cash flow. Most government receivables pay in about 45 days which means that the government contractor needs to cover all operational expenses while waiting to be paid. Whi
Soon Just About Any Underwater Borrower Will Be Able to Refinance
The Federal Housing Finance Agency released details of a newly revamped Home Affordable Refinance Program today, with the main feature being a lack of a loan-to-value limit.
Previously, the max LTV accepted under the program was 125 percent, meaning those in need of the most help were essentially out of luck.
With this change, even the deepest underwater borrower will be able to refinance their mortgage to take advantage of today’s record low mortgage rates. Of course, there are some limitations.
- The mortgage must be owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. – The mortgage must have been sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac on or before May 31, 2009. -
File these Office Cliches in the Circular File
From Suzanne Lucas writing for Yahoo!’s Financially Fit:
What corporate jargon are you tired of? Career Builder asked 5,000 workers what corporate buzzwords they’d like to see off the table.
Here are the top phrases that should be banished from the planet:
- Outside the box
- Low-hanging fruit
- Synergy
- Loop me in
- Best of breed
- Incentivize
- Mission-critical
- Bring to the table
- Value-add
- Elevator pitch
I have a few more:
- Team player
- Positive/Negative feedback
- Crunch time
- Deal breaker
- Win-Win Situation
- File this in the Circular File
- Something or other “101?
State Bancorp buys back TARP shares
State Bancorp, the parent company of State Bank of Long Island, has redeemed all $36.8 million of its stock issued as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The Jericho-based firm bought back the preferred stock it issued to the U.S. Department of the Treasury on Dec. 5, 2008 as part of the TARP capital purchase program.
State Bancorp was required to acquire the preferred stock as a condition to the closing of its merger with Valley National Bancorp.
10 of My Best Purchases
Splurges are often looked down upon in the personal finance world, but what about the purchases you make that make you money, save you money, or help you out in general in the long run? Here are 10 of my best purchases:
- MacBook: My MacBook is probably my best investment yet. Before I got it, I had my laptop for 4 years and it was starting to slow down on me. My MacBook came with more memory, plenty of protection against viruses, and was a lot faster.