Wealth Matters: Filmmaking as an Alternative Investment
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Marc H. Simon is an entertainment lawyer at Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, but over the last decade he has produced three well-received documentaries.
Wealth Matters: Self-Directed I.R.A.’s in Real Estate Need Investor Effort
Elliot D. Woods for The New York Times Roger Voisinet, a real estate agent and the former men’s hockey coach at the University of Virginia, bought part of an ice-skating rink with his self-directed I.R.A.
The Haggler: Cellphone Cramming Gets a Second Look
THE Haggler’s last column apparently caused a lot of readers to take a close look at their cellphone bills, and many made a disturbing discovery: they had been crammed. To recap, cramming is the unsavory act of tacking an unrequested service fee to a phone bill. It’s been a land-line ...
Fair Game: How a Financial Products Agency Could Protect Investors
THE Food and Drug Administration vets new drugs before they reach the market. But imagine if there were a Wall Street version of the F.D.A. — an agency that examined new financial instruments and ensured that they were safe and benefited society, not just bankers. How different our economy might ...
Wealth Matters: What to Look For in an Active Investment Manager
IF there is one warning label that seems to have little effect, it is the one on the bottom of a securities prospectus: “Past performance is no indication of future results.” Yet investors regularly ask for a mutual fund’s track record over one, three, five years or more before putting ...
Shortcuts: Why People Remember Negative Events More Than Positive Ones
MY sisters and I have often marveled that the stories we tell over and over about our childhood tend to focus on what went wrong. We talk about the time my older sister got her finger crushed by a train door on a trip in Scandinavia. We recount the time ...
Fair Game: Fairfax Financial’s $400 Million Tax Break, Revisited
IF you saw $20 on the ground, would you stop to pick it up? Silly question. O.K., try this one: Would you stop to pick up $400 million? That not-so-silly question is for our friends who run the Whistleblower Office at the Internal Revenue Service. The $400 million matter involves ...
Bucks Blog: Financial Advice for More Than Just Political Hopefuls
February 10, 2012, 1:51 pm By BUCKS EDITORS The discussion of taxes usually waits until sometime close to the filing deadline, April 15. But this year, the presidential candidates’ release of their past returns has lead to a much deeper look much earlier. One thing that has come out of ...
Bucks Blog: Pfizer and Its Recall of Birth Control Pills
The drug maker Pfizer said Wednesday that it was recalling packets of birth control pills because some had been packaged incorrectly, potentially causing women to take an inadequate dose and possibly become pregnant. The recall involves about a million packets, although only about 30 may actually have been affected, the ...
Bucks Blog: Suze Orman Takes to O Magazine to Promote Her New Card
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Suze Orman’s entrance into the prepaid debit card business with something called the Approved Card. In that piece, I asked her whether she thought the viewers of her CNBC show would be troubled by her making money off their everyday transactions. Would they ...
Wealth Matters: Deciding Who’s Rich (or Smart) Enough for High-Risk Investments
Yana Paskova for The New York Times Yasho Lahiri, a lawyer who advises institutional investors, said investors would be better protected with more disclosures than by their wealth. But it has broader implications. Should the United States government be deciding what people can do with their money? And how do ...
Fair Game: Mortgage Servicing Horror Stories – Fair Game
THE authorities have fallen silent lately about a possible settlement over foreclosure abuses at big mortgage servicing companies. The talks began in earnest last March, and people keep whispering that a deal is nigh. But last week, a spokesman for Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and ...
Bucks Blog: A Plan for 2012 That You’ll Actually Follow
Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah. His sketches are archived here on the Bucks blog. His new book, “The Behavior Gap,” will be out in January. For 2012, I have a challenge for you: make financial decisions on purpose. Too much of what we do ...
For Law Schools, a Price to Play the A.B.A.’s Way
Patrick Murphy-Racey for The New York Times Pete DeBusk, who founded a medical device company, DeRoyal Industries, is the main benefactor of Lincoln Memorial University. “A lot of people talk about Appalachia,” he says, “but how many people do anything for it?” THE library at the Duncan School of Law may ...
Mortgages: Mortgages — Loans for Multifamily Homes
THE rental market’s strength may be enticing some buyers to look at multifamily properties, but qualifying for a mortgage on rental units is often more difficult than on a single-family residence. Borrowers should be prepared to gather more documentation, and the interest rate and required down payment will very likely ...
Strategies: Why Investors Should Look Beyond Europe — Strategies
FINANCIAL markets are transfixed by events in Europe, and no wonder. The euro zone is under severe stress. A breakup could make recent volatility look like a day at the beach. Whether the latest agreement of European leaders brings a final resolution to the euro crisis won’t be clear for ...
Obama Fights for Confirmation of New Consumer Agency Chief
WASHINGTON — The White House has undertaken an extraordinary push this week to promote the confirmation of a director for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, despite signs that Senate Republicans will not budge from their vow to block any nomination to the post unless Democrats agree to overhaul the ...