Money Tips Network

The initial public offering (IPO) of the international e-commerce company Alibaba recently attracted a lot of attention — not to mention a couple billion dollars of investment money. This might be okay if it were an isolated occurrence, but lately there has been a flurry of IPOs — and they make me feel a little itchy about the investment environment.

I understand the principle that growing companies opening themselves up to new sources of capital is one way the economy grows. However, when investors go overboard for IPOs — either by overpaying for specific stocks or supporting too many new issues at once — it raises questions about both individual stocks and the market as a whole.

What kind of questions? Well, here are nine things that IPOs make me wonder:

There are about 45 million businesses in the United States of which more than 99 percent are considered small businesses. More than 40 million of those small businesses have fewer than 20 employees. All businesses, small and large share a common need for protection against the unexpected, and small business insurance satisfies that need. Unlike, big businesses that can have policies tailored to their exact needs, small businesses must rely on off the shelf solutions.

The challenge when it comes to small business insurance is twofold, having the right coverage and enough of it to provide adequate protection. The answers to both challenges are unique to the individual business, however, making a decision about how much insurance is necessary cannot be done without knowing what kind of insurance is needed. To help decode the myriad business insurance offerings, we’ve created an overview of each of the different business insurance products available.

In my experience, many of the truly useful frugal tactics come about from little tweaks to one’s daily routine. If you can look at something that you do almost every day and find some little way to shave a minute off of it, you’ve saved more than six hours over the course of a year. If you can look at that routine and shave a quarter off of it, you’ve saved $90 over the course of a year. If you can do those kinds of changes to several routines in your life, you’re starting to look at some impressive savings.

I’m not talking about things that throw your routine to the wolves and force you to start over from scratch. I’m talking about simple little ways to alter a routine so that the expense of each run of that routine is a little less or the time involved is a little less.

Here are six examples of pretty normal daily routines in my life that I’ve managed to “hack” in significant ways over the years to save both time and money.

Clothes can say many different things. Such as: “I’m quietly confident.” Or: “I’m hip and stylish.” Or even: “I’m utterly tacky.”

Regardless of the specifics, all clothes say: “I’m not naked.”  This is largely what I demand of my clothing, and it’s largely what everyone else demands of my clothing as well.

My wife has a few more criteria than I do about my clothing, one of which is that the color of said clothing shouldn’t make me look naked. Because that’s nearly as bad as actually being naked.  (If you can picture Slim Goodbody’s evil doppelganger Fat Badbody, then you get the point.)

Aside from actual nakedness or faux nakedness, though, I’m brand-agnostic as long as it fits reasonably well.

And if the clothes come from a thrift store, so much the better!

Simple clothing needs make for small clothing bills

Link for teaser title: 

http://www.wisebread.com/bestdeals/today

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Erin wrote in with a wonderful question that I started to address in Monday’s reader mailbag, but the answer quickly escalated into many, many paragraphs. Here’s her question:

I don’t understand how billionaires who bring in millions a year can pay less in taxes than someone working hard at a job and making $50K a year. That seems really wrong to me.

She’s referring to statements like this one from Warren Buffett:

But the differential between me and the rest of the office, not just my secretary but the rest of the office, was greater than that. It’ll be closer, but I’ll probably be the lowest paying taxpayer in the office.

He’s not lying. It is very likely that Warren Buffett is paying a lower tax rate than the other people in his office.

How is that possible? Well, let’s dig in a little bit and find out.

This article is by editor Linda Vergon.

Whenever I’ve purchased a pre-packaged Halloween costume, I’ve usually been disappointed. They rarely fit and the material and accessories are chintzy. But I take my hat off for the clever people that make their own costumes. Extra points if it’s hilarious. Year after year, these people seem to out-do themselves. I don’t know how they do it!

In 2011, April Dykman looked at Halloween spending for us.

Life is unfair and so is air travel. Two passengers may pay the same price to fly the same route, but have completely different experiences. Because airlines have varying standards of service, your comfort depends a lot on which airline you choose.

This post comes from Julia Chang at our partner site LearnVest.

First it was your phone records; now it could be your financial transactions.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Central Intelligence Agency is collecting data from U.S. money-transfer companies such as Western Union in an effort to find or track suspected funding for terrorists.

With its focus on foreign intelligence, the CIA cannot target Americans in its investigations, but it can conduct domestic operations that aid its intelligence-gathering. The agency says it isn’t collecting transaction information that takes place within the U.S.—but it can obtain records through court order for those that happen between the U.S. and foreign countries.