I’m sorry, but you picking the Cubs in the wildcard CANNOT wait until November.

As the NFL analysts say, “C’MON MAN!”

:)

My friend is a winemaker and between the capitalization requirements, the long work requirements during harvest season (pretty much 12-14 hour days from early Sept to end of Oct with no days off) and the business of marketing and selling wine when you have to compete with companies scaled to sell it under $5/bottle, it can be quite a challenge. Sounds like your brother understands this and enjoys his hobby.

As I understand deRuiter’s comment: what good is all your “stuff” if you (amongst thousands of others) decide (or are forced to) move to another area/country/continent.

In the end it will be all about the gold. Having said that, the end might be for my unbron children to live through. The way I see it: I buy one 1oz coin a month towards my pension plan. I will try to not use them and just act as a guardian of this family treasure chest towards the next generation. And with the rest of the money : 6 months food reserve, energy supply and water filters! No problems with all that, but Gold comes first for me.

One last question: why is the official Gold pricing in the US 42,22$ and the price you pay for the real stuff way higher ?

It kills me to pay for a game monthly. It makes me want to play it more to “get my money out of it”.

As an alternative, Dungeons and Dragons Online is completely free to download and play. There are portions that are available to pay and get advancements, but the gameplay is free.
My husband is on DDO now and uses it to play online with friends in other states. http://www.ddo.com

My friends had $13,000 saved up. If she would have gone ahead and paid the school bill with her savings and then applied, she, no doubt, would have qualified. Since she had saved so much, she didn’t qualify.

The idea is to show a low amount of savings on the form. If you’ve already used it up, it’s not dishonest to say “0″ because it is no longer in your account.

So far my sons have applied when they’ve had nothing in the bank (either before they’ve gone to their summer job, or after they’ve put it all towards their school bill), so they also show “0″.

As to the guy who is surfing the net. I’d consider cutting the internet. That way, if he wants to surf the web, he has to do it on his own “nickel” which would then require some work. Of course, having a heart to heart talk with some requirements would/should come first.

And if the amount of money being printed grows so large, and it gets loaned out, to where inflation over the next five years becomes very significant, gold could raise to 5000 dollars an oz or something, and you wouldn’t have lost so much due to inflation.

Still, if it is the apocalypse or something, gold is about as useful as dirt. But if by collapse of the dollar they mean “one euro is worth about 10 dollars” it might be a good hedge.

I couldn’t agree more.

So – if the BP station is a franchise, the boycott isn’t hurting BP, but does impact the local franchise holder. Even if it is a BP-owned station, they aren’t losing anything – the gasoline will be sold somewhere else (it’s fungible, remember). Refiners typically make five cents or so profit per gallon (refining margin) at the gate … they just sell an unbelievable number of gallons! Medium size refinery processes 200,000 Barrels/ day. At 42 gallons/ barrel, that’s 8.4 million gallons per day. At five cents per gallon, that is a half million dollars refining profit per day. (Don’t forget the refinery is a 4-5 billion dollar investment). Retailing profit is separate.

The real profit (and risk) in oil is producing the crude from the wells (upstream).

(Worked in the refining business for 37 years so far).

Me and my fiancee are finally starting to plan our wedding. We are going to get married in about 17 months.

What is the best way to save money for a wedding?

And do you have any tips or ideas for saving money during planning a wedding?

We would like to do as much of the wedding ourselves. Our goal is to spend no more than $5000 on our wedding. We are getting married in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Don’t forget that your emergency funds should be treated as an investment, like any other — but as a conservative investment, because you don’t want to risk that the market is down when you need to withdraw your cash in an emergency. These funds only become “excessive” if the money would be better off invested elsewhere to create a more balanced portfolio.

If you look at your portfolio holistically, you can consider your emergency fund as part of the fixed-income component: one with a low but steady rate of return and minimal volatility. That lets you place more of your non-emergency funds in stocks and other more volatile investments that grow faster.

About the politics (I’m not an American, so I could be wrong): would it be political suicide to combine higher interest rates with usury laws? Over here, every interest asked over 15%(*) is illegal. (You can get around that a bit with fees, but still..)

(*) it fluctuates with the interest rate. IIRC it’s about 15% atm. At the time of higher interest rates, it goes up to 19%.