Money Tips Network

Claes Bell

Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your brain is just not evolved to process big numbers. In our journey from hunter-gatherers to wage slaves, homo sapiens never quite evolved the mental machinery needed to efficiently process the high numbers we typically face when doing things like buying cars, taking out mortgages [...]

How big numbers short-circuit your brain and how to fight back from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

This blog was posted by Claes Bell

In Naked With Cash, seven anonymous Consumerism Commentary readers publicly track and analyze their finances on a monthly basis. For almost a decade, I tracked my own finances on Consumerism Commentary; now I’m sharing the benefits of public accountability with the participants. I’ve partnered with financial planners who will offer some guidance along the way. Read this introduction to learn more about the series.

J.W. is thirty-one years old and a father of two. He works in retail and is underemployed, and his wife and kids are on state medical plans. Their household income is supplemented by SNAP (food stamps). Read his bio for more information about his family’s situation.

Claes Bell

This week I got an electronic mail from Target containing some sad news. Addressed with maximum sincerity to “Dear Target Guest,” (I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when they call me that) the email notified me that in addition to the theft of 40 million customers’ payment information reported in December, thieves had also [...]

Target, other retailers sorry about data breaches but somehow they just keep happening from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

This blog was posted by Claes Bell

General Electric has been active in the financing business for a very long time, but not in a way that hits you in the face. Don’t let their obscurity fool you, though. In banking, size has its advantages and, in terms of assets, General Electric is a powerhouse. Its banking operations have survived a number of recessions, including the Great Recession, and even grown. It therefore answers the bell on the most important question you can have about a bank: How safe is it?

GE Capital Bank Savings Accounts

GE Capital Bank isn’t a traditional bank, in that it doesn’t have branches and offer consumer mortgages and personal loans. It lends primarily to businesses, and its retail operation focuses on deposit-taking (i.e., savings accounts and similar activities).

Mutual of Omaha has been a well-known player in the insurance industry for more than a century. In 2007, Mutual of Omaha created an affiliate company, Omaha Financial Holdings, Inc., (OFHI) to explore the banking sector. Omaha Financial Holdings, Inc., opened with $700 million in assets and 13 locations by acquiring three community banks — Nebraska State Bank, Security Federal Bank and Peak National Bank. Now, Mutual of Omaha Bank has grown to 49 locations serving clients nationwide — and they also offer online banking.

Our primary credit card was compromised.  Again.

We noticed a spurious $9.84 charge when looking over our Chase Sapphire statement.  A quick visit to the website and a bit of Googling revealed the bad news.

So we called up Chase, reported the transaction, and they credited it back to us, no questions asked (they’re good like that).  They canceled our current card, and rushed us a new one for free, which came promptly (they’re good like that, too).

Following that, we looked over our recurring charges on that card, and saw only one that was due to be posted soon.  A couple of days later, when my wife went to the business to change the credit card number on file, and to pay if needed.  she was informed that the charge had bee posted that morning, and that the system was reporting that our account was paid up.  So, she left without paying anything.

Claes Bell

Going out to eat is great for a lot of reasons: no dishes, new culinary experiences, time to relax and share a meal with friends or my significant other, annoying the Internet by posting pictures of my food. But those benefits come at a price. Going back to the days when I used to blow [...]

This is why you’re broke, going out to eat edition from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

This blog was posted by Claes Bell

It’s that time again, time for the inevitable turn-of-the-year vows to eat smarter, exercise more and be nicer to friends and family. One in a hundred may actually keep those commitments and become healthier, better people in the process.

Others may focus on becoming financially healthier, promising themselves they will look harder for the best credit cards, or the best savings accounts available to them.

But here’s one line item not enough folks are including on their list of resolutions: making a long-term financial plan. According to a recent study, 84 percent of respondents indicated they had no intention of including financial planning in their 2014 resolutions. That’s a woeful 16 percent, and it looks even more pitiful next to the one-third of respondents in the survey’s first year, 2009. If they’re not crafting plans in the dozen months ahead, why not?

I’m a reluctant entrepreneur, but I’ve learned to be less self-conscious about the fact that this is the designation society has given to me as someone who started his own business. While many people after, but also before, the recession have started side businesses to improve their financial security, for me, a hobby turned into a profitable and enjoyable way to spend my time.

But entrepreneur was always a dirty word to me, even after I came to the realization that I was, in fact, an entrepreneur. The word hustle is now associated with side businesses, but a hustle is a con, a scam. These words have always had the connotation of being less than forthright in business, using deceptive practices to get a customer or mark to part with his or her hard-earned money.