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With banks paying historically low interest rates — in many cases less than 1% — they certainly don’t seem to be a good place for your long-term savings. At least until you compare savings accounts with the stock market, where doubts about the economy are keeping prices depressed.Then there’s housing. Although prices have shown signs of stabilizing in some parts of the country, foreclosures continue to unnerve real-estate investors.

I’ve been investing in stocks, bonds and real estate for more than 30 years. For about 10 of those years I was a stockbroker for three major Wall Street companies, so this is a block I’ve been around.

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Credit card rates and fees soar thanks in part to lost credit card debt.
Many consumers thought the interest rates and fees on their credit cards would go down or stay the same as a result of the new laws initiated in 2009, but the opposite has turned out to be the case.

In fact, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act is part of the reason lenders have hiked both rates and fees since it was enacted. According to a report in the Newark Star-Ledger, the laws, along with losses as a result of bad credit card debt being written off as uncollectable and drops in consumer spending, have led interest rates to skyrocket in the last year. Full Article…

As of July 1, the Nasdaq-100 () is attractive, given how well-positioned it is. I believe if you can’t make money owning a company like that, you’ll have a hard time making money buying stocks in general. (Microsoft is the publisher of .)

I bring this up because the latest report from my good friend Fred Hickey, the author of the High-Tech Strategist newsletter, presented a number of reasons Microsoft ought to do well. I would encourage folks to subscribe to Hickey’s service to read all of what he had to say, but he made one statement in particular that pretty much sums it up: “I have been following this stock for over 22 years, and with the exception of the crash-level prices in late 2008 and into 2009, I’ve never seen Microsoft so cheap, or so misunderstood.” (For a year’s subscription, send a check for $140 to High-Tech Strategist, P.O.

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Brent Hunsberger, The Oregonian
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It’s Only Money is almost off “hiatus.” Its big test approaches this weekend, and it still needs help studying.

For that reason, it will ensnare you wise readers into some quizzes.

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Share Perhaps they will help improve your financial wherewithal as well. Full Article…

News of credit card debt not as good as numbers show.
The latest reports from the Federal Reserve Board and the American Bankers Association made the state of the U.S. economy look great. The Fed said credit card debt had declined sharply, by billions of dollars for almost all of the last 20 months. The ABA said the rate at which consumers were unable to pay their credit card bills on time was also dwindling. There was, it seemed, finally some good news for the nation’s economic recovery.

But that simply isn’t the case, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. Full Article…