Few people would make the case that we should encourage gambling. But what if gambling could be used as a ploy to improve road safety, recycling, school attendance, the financial well-being of citizens, and society as a whole?
Buyers snatched up houses as investment properties and second homes at an especially fast clip last year. The number of homes purchased for investment purposes rose a whopping 65% in 2011, from 749,000 to 1.23 million properties—which was more than one-fourth of all homes sold last year.
New research reveals that the kind of cash we carry around with us affects how generous or thrifty we are when we spend money.
Retailers and restaurants love gift cards—so much so that they load them with bonus cash in order to sell more cards. This makes total sense once you realize how often gift cards aren’t used at all, and how all those cards add up to billions of dollars in profits.
Investors face two growing risks – a crackup of the Eurozone and a double-dip recession. To track the gathering storm, keep your eye on global bond yields.
It’s well-documented that people cut loose and spend more when they’re paying with a credit card rather than cash. Scientists refer to this as a “decoupling of purchase from the pain of payment” — essentially, we don’t perceive credit cards as “real money.” But a new study takes this observation a step further by postulating [...]
Once upon a time, cash was king. But more and more technology has tied purchasing power to credit and debit cards for their ease of use. Smartphones are even beginning to play a part in the credit-card payment business with ventures like Square, started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, which allows anyone with a smartphone [...]
One of the biggest risks to the housing market, many economists have been noting, is the virtual certainty that interest rates will rise, and probably sooner than most people think.
One more reason to opt for paper over plastic as often as possible: your health (physical and financial).
Many economists and investors complain that the federal government has effectively been “printing money” through its loose monetary and fiscal policies. But in a strictly literal sense, the very opposite turns out to be true: In 2010 the U.S. Treasury printed the fewest $1 and $5 bills in decades; and the Treasury Department, for the first [...]
The banks have lost the swipe fee battle, and soon it’s expected that every time a debit card is used, the store where that card is swiped will collect a little more money, and the institution issuing that card will collect a little less. While the fight is being waged between banks and retailers, it’s [...]
