What If You Can’t Pay Your Taxes This Year? + MORE

Stock Market Basics: Traditional and Electronic Trading
I was talking with a friend and the question came up “how does the stock market work?” This got us talking about how the stock market and trading has evolved through the years.
The financial markets are a complex entity with their own institutional and economic structures that play a vital role in how stock prices are established…

I was talking to a friend yesterday who said that wanting more money was bad because you will never have enough. You will always want more and more.
I disagree. I think it’s usually a good thing to want more money.
Before you label me another greedy 20-something who only cares about his bank account, hear me out…

You know you live in a First World country when you have the luxury of flushing your toilet with drinking water.
Even though most Americans don’t spend a good part of their day worrying about accessing fresh water, water in this country is growing scarcer and more expensive with each passing year…

Here’s a piece from CNN that details where Americans keep their wealth (what there is of it — the median net worth is $69k). The summary:

The composition of that wealth has changed over time. Back when Ronald Reagan was president, home equity made up nearly half of young adults’ net worth, while interest-earning accounts, like those at a bank, accounted for a quarter of senior citizens’ wealth…

There are lots of reward credit cards that allow cardholders to earn valuable points, miles, and cash back. Yet most of the products come with an annual fee that can start at around $50 and go up to several hundreds of dollars per year.
But what if you are trying to maximize your credit card rewards while refusing to pay an annual fee? American Express offers its Blue Sky card while Capital One features its VentureOne rewards card, each with no annual fee and competitive rewards…

Shopping locally is a popular trend I’ve seen popping up everywhere from Facebook to the local news. This is one of my favorite ways to shop, since I despise visiting most large chain stores. When I drive past a Starbucks to the local family-run coffee shop to get my caffeine fix, I feel better about supporting the families in my community…

Renting a car is the cheapest way to have fun when you travel because you are not dependent on cabs, which are very expensive especially in big towns and you also save money on gas instead of driving your own car to the place you want to travel. Rented cars usually are well maintained which means you will almost never have any trouble with breakdowns and since the car is not yours, the risk of theft is almost discarded because the rental company takes care of the matter and you lose no money…

If I wasn’t whipped so hard during my first job out of college, I never would have saved over 50% of my after-tax income every year for 13 years in a row. I probably would’ve blown the majority of my income on fancy cars, late nights at the clubs with bottle service, and frequent weekend trips to Atlantic City or Vegas…

(Guest post by new PF blogger, Tiffany, who ranted earlier about people thinking she was rich ;))
I just broke up with my financial advisor.  Or to put it better – I tried to break up with my financial advisor. There’s something about the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ sequence that is just so lacking, but in reality there are no better words for it…

If you are in a registered pension plan with your employer and leave that company, or if you are laid off, your pension will be transferred into a Locked-In Retirement Account (LIRA). Locked-In Retirement Accounts are sometimes referred to as the more appropriate name of Locked-In Retirement Savings Plans (LRSP)…

I’ve been creating a library for the past three years. I’m obsessed with building a sprawling selection of quality books, but I rarely pay cover price. I’d never be able to afford it.The Lakeland Library Cooperative in Michigan says the average cost of a fiction trade paperback in 2012 was $16.92. (“Trade” means a paperback produced for sale in bookstores…

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Handling financial incompatibility and stress
2. Inexpensive but unorthodox wedding
3. Eliminating regular expenses
4…

This post is from staff writer Kristin Wong. Over the weekend, a friend and I were enjoying a couple of beers in my neighborhood. As we sat outside people watching, he drooled over every fancy car that drove by. “That’s a whatever-whatever,” he would tell me. “It costs $100,000…

Binary options are very alluring to many people. Perhaps it is the ease and simplicity which allows traders to trade a large selection of assets. People have the potential to make large profits on their investment. A person’s entire investment can be affected with one click of a mouse.
Binary options are trading channels that have become very popular over the last few years…

It’s been an eventful few years with the IRS taking on major companies and even countries to recover taxes and penalties owed by businesses and individuals.
With the economy in a slump, and tax revenues falling, the IRS and many State governments are trying to close the tax gap (the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid) with increased tax collection efforts…

The perks of having a home business go beyond walking to work in your pajamas: you’re your own boss and you set your own hours. But there a lot of pitfalls, too, especially when you just start out. When you’re running your own company, it’s important to keep an eye on everything and keep a potentially stupid mistake from deterring a would-be customer…

One of the things I love about living in our modern world is the technology. I love how a number of chores can be performed easily with the help of technology. This includes financial chores like paying bills.
Automatic bill pay can be a great help to many consumers who want to make sure that their payments are made on time and in full…