Money and Minds

Considerations when using a prepaid card

If you want to have the convenience of a credit card, but you can't qualify for a regular credit card, one option is a prepaid card, sometimes known as a prepaid debit card or a stored value card. The concept is the same. It looks like a credit card, and ...

Financial literacy impacts decision making

Research by the US Federal Trade Commission shows that financial education affects financial decision-making. Failure to plan for retirement, lack of participation in the stock market, and poor borrowing behavior can all be linked to ignorance of basic financial concepts. Some of these findings, from the 2008 paper Financial Literacy: An ...

Software programs as outsourcing alternatives

The Internet makes outsourcing of business functions, especially back office type functions like accounting and word processing, especially attractive for companies in high-wage regions like the USA and western Europe, to outsource to low-wage countries where trained professionals can do a competent job. Outsourcing may be a great idea for ...

Car title loan basic facts

The massive changes in the economy in the last five years has had a number of effects on average consumers. One of the biggest is the drop in home ownership because of tight consumer credit or because of home foreclosures. Another effect is that homes in many parts of the ...

Keeping your head during the fracking gold rush

If you hear the word "fracking" and you think of the science fiction series Battlestar Galactica, this is not the right article for you. If however you have an interest (either intellectual or financial) in the oil and gas exploration business, then fracking has a whole different meaning, specifically the ...

Variable rate financing in real estate investing

When it comes to real estate investing, the investor usually has one of two primary goals, obtaining ongoing cash flow or getting either a short-term or long term capital gain. First, some basic definitions: Capital Gains - If you invest for capital gains, your goal is to sell something for more ...

Managing debt by expanding your assets

Previous articles have discussed various aspects of debt management, including changing one's approach to debt. Those changes can included reducing the total amount of debt, reducing the number of debts, looking at different financing options, and understanding the difference between a positive debt that leads to long term positive financial ...

The gold rush over big data

Often in the online world, a new set of buzzwords like 'big data' goes from being something known only in the technology world to something that is mentioned frequently in mainstream media. Like many other technology buzzwords, the reality of big data was happening long before the media hype, and ...

How to use graphics to explain complex economic relationships

The world of business and finance are filled with numbers, and often filled with fairly complex mathematical concepts in probability, statistics, game theory, and operations research. This is true in just about any enterprise, and is especially true in those kinds of large-scale activities that support basic services in large ...

Make smarter decisions with home loan calculators

Mortgage payment calculations are based on complex mathematical formulas, and fortunately there are many options for finding calculators to make this mathematical process easy and painless. By using a mortgage calculator, it becomes very easy to know the monthly payments you need to make, and very easy to see what ...