Category: Business

Dear Penny, My grandfather worked hard his entire life and eventually became a fairly wealthy man. When he wrote his will, I was just a baby and my little sister had not yet been born. Half of his estate (minus personal property) goes to our mother, and half goes to me. Our mother has told […]

When your loved one dies and you know you’re the beneficiary of their life insurance policy, getting the payout is typically pretty simple. You submit a claim form and a copy of the death certificate. Then the insurer usually pays the claim within a few weeks. But what if you don’t know whether your family […]

There have always been long-standing rules about real estate ownership, including the three most important ones: location, location, location. But the one constant about real estate investing is that nothing ever stays the same. Even the location rule, because preferred locations change from year to year, and certainly from generation to generation. After the 2020 […]

Dive Brief: Three-quarters of consumers said higher prices they are paying for foods to prepare meals are hurting their pocketbooks more than costlier snacks, Mondelēz International said in a survey developed in partnership with Harris Poll. The snacking giant found in its annual State of Snacking report that 89% of global consumers are concerned about inflation and […]

Unfortunately, federal income tax refunds are expected to be smaller this year for millions of Americans. Wouldn’t it be nice to double your refund? That’s the idea behind a new sweepstakes contest from Jackson Hewitt, the second-largest tax preparation company in the U.S. (The biggest is H&R Block.) To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the company […]

Electric vehicles (EV) are gaining traction in the U.S., most recently making up more than 6% of new vehicle sales during Q3 of last year — more than doubling the 2% from Q3 2020, according to CleanTechnica.  As federal funding continues to accelerate the development of a national EV charging network, convenience store operators will […]

If you haven’t warmed up to the snowball or avalanche debt payoff methods, think smaller. Much smaller. Consider the debt snowflake strategy for tackling debt. Unlike its better-known siblings, the snowflake method doesn’t involve a structured budgeting system for paying down your debt — think of it more like an easy way to throw a […]

Dive Brief: Activist investor ValueAct Capital is pushing for Seven & i Holdings, the parent company of 7-Eleven Inc. and 7-Eleven Japan, to spin off the convenience store arm into its own company, according to a Reuters report on Thursday. San Francisco-based ValueAct — which owns shares worth just over 4% of the Japanese holding company, […]

It’s 10 pm and, like a vampire stirring in its coffin to greet the nocturne, my garbage bin comes to life. A semicircle of yellow lights on the lid starts flashing, an illuminated lock icon appears, and inside the bone-white, 27-inch container I can hear a steady churn of metal paddles slowly tumbling the eggshells, […]

Consider this a friendly heads-up: Your car insurance bill is about to go up. Well, that’s not fair, you’re thinking. What can I do about it? We’ve got a dozen ideas for what you can do about it. Rising Car Insurance Prices We just saw two separate reports forecasting that 2023 will bring a noticeable […]