Receipts can be a pain – all those crumpled pieces of paper hogging up precious drawer space. Most people just toss them, but sometimes they’re essential. Like when you’re making a big purchase: laundry machines, flat-screen TVs, diamond rings (you want to make sure she says yes first), computers, or that fab new stereo system you bought to impress all your friends. These are all things you need to save receipts for. Think appliances, rocks and major electronics.

One reason in particular you need to save all those receipts is because those products are often covered by a warranty. If…

All About The Benjamins: Alternative Investments For The Savvy Investor

Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds represent the largest portions of investment portfolios in most brokerage accounts and retirement accounts. If the performance of these traditional investments during the past economic crisis has left you feeling disillusioned, there are other types of assets you can invest in. If you are tempted to cast about for alternative investments, look for ones that have the potential to thrive when other asset classes are performing below par.

Commodities are an example of alternative investments…

These days we hear every conceivable argument about why the bull market will die, or stop, or correct, and by how much, how fast, etc. Among the many triggers discussed, there are EU elections, job creation angst, social media bubbles, fiscal cliffs, solar flares, lunar cycles, lycanthropy (after all, we have seen a record number of investors morphing into bears since '08), and yes, the specter of the all-powerful price at the pump.

In all seriousness, I've talked about the negativity bubble a number of times, and in my view, it's still thriving.

What we don't really hear,…

Coffee: the caffeinated fuel that powers a majority of the modern work force. With a coffee shop at every corner, it's hard not to stop for a cup of joe on the way to the office.

But is that coffee habit breaking your otherwise balanced budget?

Stop and think price

The price of a “modern” cup of coffee – the sugary espresso drink with the nifty name – has gone a little crazy. It costs around $4 for 16 ounces. At three visits a week, this translates to about $52 a month or $624 a year. If you get a latte every…

Imagine if the phrase “Everything old is new again” applied to technology — that consumers suddenly grew bored with intuitive design and began to hunger for, say, the touch of a bulky button or the sound of a dial-up modem. Well, as it turns out, retro gadgets and manufacturers have found a niche market in tech nostalgia.

Maybe it’s just me but the screeches, pops, and hisses of the Internet connecting of yore isn’t the stuff of wistful memories. They’re the tech equivalent of nails scraping on a chalkboard. I don’t fondly recall the carpal-tunnel-inducing exercise of…

What if there were a financial products approval agency modeled on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? A recent paper by law professor Eric Posner and economics professor E. Glen Weyl proposed such an agency to review new financial products and approve only the ones that improved social utility. The article, plus a Bloomberg op-ed summarizing the argument, touched off a lot of discussion, including an approving New York Times column by Gretchen Morgenson.

There are two reasons to dislike this proposal: theory and practice. In theory, the goal is a bad one. In practice, the proposed agency is designed to resemble the FDA,…

Health care is an unavoidable aspect of being human, and even with stellar medical coverage, it deserves a line item in your budget. According to the latest News and Numbers report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the average visit to a doctor’s office costs $199–but you’ll shell out $1,275, on average, for an outpatient hospital visit.

While you can’t control all forms of disease and illness, there are proactive steps that you can take to maximize your healthcare budget, and it starts by getting the most out of the care you receive in the doctor’s office….

Things are bad in Europe. Anybody with access to a newspaper or the Internet has heard about the debt crisis in the Eurozone, which consists of 17 European Union member states, including Germany and France, but not including the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Things are bad. Greece totters on the edge of bankruptcy, with Italy, Spain, and Portugal lined up behind, ready to follow suit. Meanwhile, Germany and France, the two financially strongest members of the Eurozone, struggle to resolve the problem, even as they wonder, “What were we thinking?!”

Downhill from Here?

The more important questions for our…

Many people know about tax deductions related to their career. What fewer taxpayers know about are tax deductions related to looking for a new job. You don’t have to be unemployed to tax advantage of these tax tips for job seekers. You just have to be on the hunt for new employment.

The IRS has some basic rules for whether or not you may claim job seeker deductions just like they do with declaring income and claiming tips on taxes:

-You must be looking for a new job in your present career. You can’t use job seeker deductions…

You know them. You fear them. You love them. Now learn to deal with them: The Haggler, The Worry Wart, The Expert, The Evangelist and others are customers who can either help, or hurt, your business. Love them or hate them, managing these types of customers is as important as taking control of other aspects of your business.

Business owners across the country share their nightmare customer types, along with a few dreamy ones, as well as their strategies for getting through the day with both their sanity, and their client list, still intact.