Financial Service Info

I’m so excited to be joining the What’s My Score team as a guest blogger. Starting this week you’ll see occasional posts from me on a topic that really matters to me—financial education. I’m passionate about helping to make sure everyone has the money management skills they need. I’ve worked in the field of financial education for over 10 years—focused particularly on financial literacy for women and young people, so I’ve seen how money problems can impact a person’s confidence and prevent them from living their most productive and independent lives. Hopefully my posts will give you a few ideas about my own financial choices and tips I’ve learned for using credit wisely and living well on a budget along the way.

You may have seen some of my writing before in LifeTuner and Forbes.com, or read the The Teen Girl’s Gotta-Have-It Guide to Money, which I worked on as well. If you haven’t, feel

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The battering Tesco shares have taken as spooked investors ditched them can be taken as a clear warning that 2012 has the potential for a nasty stock market crash.

Tesco delivered a trading update that was poor in terms of UK sales. The supermarket giant is struggling in its own backyard, as consumers cut back and analysts have been sniping at its sliding like-for-like UK sales.

Despite those local troubles, Tesco has been consistently growing profits at a robust rate and that has kept its share price bobbing along. What did for it this morning was a hint of caution on that.

It said: ‘We expect Group trading profit growth to be around the low end of the current consensus range.’  And thus the shares of one of our most successful companies, that many were arguing was already undervalued, plunged 15 per cent.

Over the past decade, shares of Intuitive Surgical , a niche maker of robotic surgical equipment, rose from $10 per share to the $460s. Since March 2009, the bottom of the previous bear market, shares have quadrupled. Today, with its trailing P/E at 40, shares can hardly be considered cheap, but analysts believe that with the expansion of its robotic line to other medical procedures, Intuitive Surgical may be well poised to grow exponentially. There are plenty of skeptics who are bearish on Intuitive Surgical after all, with the economy still in fragile state, are hospitals and medical facilities about to spend heavily on robotic surgeons? What separates it from the pack of “future stocks” such as solar power companies or Tesla Motors which have all been severely punished for their speculative forecasts?

Daily Chart If you are not able to see the chart, your email client probably does not support javascript. To

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Yesterday when the markets closed the price of oil was only 66 cents shy of $100. What a come back. We expected oil, stocks and gold to sink down deep…and not come back for a long time. So far, we’re wrong about that. People are still sending money to Wall Street to buy stocks and gold.

Where is all this money mail coming from? We don’t know exactly, but there are foreign stamps on many of the envelopes. Foreign stock markets are down. Many of the leading foreign bonds are down too. Investors look at Italy; they see Vesuvius. They look at France; they see Dunkirk. They look India; they see a Black Hole.

Investors are afraid. They look to the USA for safety.

But oil? Hmmm… We don’t know the cause, but we have a pretty clear idea of the consequence. High oil prices make it harder for oil- dependent US households to make ends meet…thereby reinforcing the slump in consumer spending.

Yes, the Great Correction proceeds. Low l

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Over on FreeMoneyFinance there was a discussion in the comments a long while ago about certain insurance investments.  One person there linked to this video on Youtube.   I found the video interesting in itself. 

The video is comparing a cash value policy to buying term and investing the difference.  I noted the following points from the video:

1. They cite a $840 annual premium for $1M level term. I get quotes of around $700 annual for $1M.
2. The video assumes a 30% tax rate. Marginal tax bracket of 33% kicks in around $200k taxable income. Which is the top 1-2% of the nation.
3. They assume a 2% management fee on your investments that you might make instead of the cash value insurance. Thats high I sure hope people aren’t paying that. Index funds are more like .1%-.5% and mutual funds 1.5%.
4. They base the performance of the cash value policy off of assumed dividend rates that are not guaranteed.    A

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If you have a flexible spending account (FSA) and there’s still money left over, this is the time to file claims for all those precious health reimbursements. Why now? Some FSAs expire on December 31, and if you don’t use the money, you lose it. (Some companies offer a grace period through March 15, so check with your employer.)

Your goal: Don’t leave money on the table. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, on average, employees who put more than $1,100 into their FSAs end up losing $100 in leftover cash. This happens when people overestimate how much they’ll need, since FSAs require that you take one big guess in the beginning of the year and hope that you’re right. (If this m

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Get your budget on

In these tough economic times, many recognize the importance of financial planning.

You want to ensure that your resources are directed to best effect, and that means creating a spending plan that works well for your situation, and helps you prepare for the future.

Good budgeting software can help you take charge of your finances.

Happily, a large number of free online budget tools exists. You can get help for nearly any budgetary need you have.

Here are some of the best free online budget tools that can help you chart a course to financial freedom:

Mint.com

This is the online budget tool that started a revolution. You can link your financial accounts savings, checking, credit cards to Mint. Your information is automatically updated as it appears in your accounts.

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