Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine back issues from March 2006:
The Little Book that Can.(The Little Book That Beats the Market)(Editorial)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: FRED W. FRAILEY I don't like investment books that make big claims. There's always a catch. So as you'd expect, I picked up Joel Greenblatt's The Little Book That Beats the Market almost against my will. (Greenblatt is a founder of the hugely successful investment firm ...
Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 01, 2006 ... A doctor urges iPod users to turn down the volume. One reader finds that flexible spending accounts have their limits. And a reader asks why home prices in Alaska were left out in the cold. 1 Although the iPodtechnology iss incredible,the hearingg losscaused byy loud noiseis ...
Business Braces for Disaster.
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: ANNE KATES SMITH * BY ANNE KATES SMITH Southern companies now know how to survive hurricanes, and New York City firms know how to weather a transit strike. As avian flu migrates around the world, it's time for businesses all over America to face the ...
WWW: Family Peacemaker.(chorebuster.net )(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006 ... Chorebuster.net will assign household chores to each member of the family. You weight each task for difficulty and specify how ...
The Agenda in Congress.(tax bill for the taxpayers)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006 ... Politicking will take a toll on this year's legislative agenda. With elections looming for both the House and Senate, many bills will fall victim to partisan battles. Best bets to pass: a tax bill that will keep the alternative minimum tax from biting millions more ...
Tech That Picks Your Pocket.(home electronics, power leakage costs)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: PAT MERTZ ESSWEIN Incredible but true: Home-electronics devices consume 75% of their power while turned off, running a clock display or preparing to respond to a remote. Some of today's most popular products, including some big-screen TVs, are among the worst standby ...
It's Your Company.(Corporate Library L.L.C.)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006 ... Nell Minow founded The Corporate Library, a corporate-governance research firm, in 1999. She is also a movie reviewer for Yahoo. Her favorite corporate movie: 1956's The Solid Gold Cadillac. As annual-report and proxy season begins, what are the important issues for investors? ...
Gold's False Signals.(gold prices accelerate )(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: JEFFREY R. KOSNETT Conventional wisdom holds that when the price of gold rallies, inflation is accelerating and interest rates are about to soar. Some pundits also call gold's recent run-up to $550 an ounce a sign that the dollar's world value is ready to plunge. They ...
Fresh Air for Travelers.(smoke free environment offered by the hotels)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: MAGALI RHEAULT Finally, the 60 million Americans who suffer from asthma and allergies can get a break on the road. About 17% of hotels now offer in-room air purifiers, for example. Westin announced in December that all of its hotels will be totally smoke-free. By June, ...
A Calculated Bet On March Madness.(sports betting)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: SEAN O'NEILL We bet you can't wait to put your money on the winner of the men's NCAA basketball tournament. Though wagering on college sports is illegal except in Nevada, the FBI estimates that office pools net about $2 billion a year. No wonder academics have been ...
You Can Call Me Al.(Federal Reserve Board's Alan Greenspan)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: MELYNDA WILCOX AND ELIZABETH KOUNTZE The world is waiting for the next act from the 80-year-old fellow who held the second-most-powerful job in Washington for nearly two decades--the maestro, Alan Greenspan. He's reportedly negotiating for office space on D.C.'s ...
What You Need to Know About College Aid.(Ahead)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Sean O'Neill 1. Beg for mercy. It just might work. If you have submitted financial-aid forms to the schools your child picked, the package of grants and loans you will soon receive may not be the last word. "Don't be abashed about explaining your circumstances," says ...
Parceling Out a $500,000 Windfall.
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Jeffrey R. Kosnett The california dream used to be about sun, sand and stardom. Now, it's about real estate and more real estate. Karyn and Kevin Carroll moved from Chicago to Orange County for work. She's 28 and in pharmaceutical sales; he's 30 and an ...
My 10 Stocks for 2006.(Ahead)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: James K. Glassman Call it smarts or just plain good luck, but the performance of my annual list of stocks gets better and better. Most years since 1995 (I took a hiatus for three years), I've offered readers of the Washington Post and now Kiplinger's Personal Finance ten ...
Stocks for the Times.(Investing)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: David Landis, STEVEN T. GOLDBERG It's been a long time since big was beautiful on Wall Street. The stocks of large companies have been in the doghouse ever since the 2000-02 bear market. Once burned, investors have long memories, and they have been slow to forgive. But ...
Doing One Thing Well.(Spencer Davidson, General American Investors Company Inc.)(Interview)
Mar 01, 2006 ... To call General American Investors quaint is an understatement. Created in 1927, GAI was one of the original closed-end funds--that is, a fund that trades on an exchange just like a stock. The firm that runs GAI does only that: It manages no other mutual funds (closed-end or traditional) ...
Oceans of Opportunity.(shipping industry)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Jeffrey R. Kosnett If real estate investment trusts could float, they'd be ocean-shipping stocks. REITs that own property returned an annualized 28% the past three years and 19% the past five. But shares of ship fleets did even better, delivering a cool 33% annualized ...
Why I'm an Optimist.(Investing)(Editorial)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Knight Kiplinger When I tally up this nation's strengths and weaknesses, the credits exceed the debits. This makes me optimistic about the future, despite the daily drumbeat of negative news. I realize the risk that I take by expressing such confidence, ...
Raves for an Off Wall Street Firm.(FAM Funds, Cobleskill, New York)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Steven T. Goldberg Cobleskill is a long way from Wall Street--175 miles due north, to be exact, in the Central-Leatherstocking region of upstate New York. Featuring rolling hills and evergreens, the farming community boasts about 7,000 inhabitants, and single-family ...
A Class Act.(John McKernan, Education Management Corp.)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: J. Alex Tarquinio As governor of Maine, John McKernan made continuing education a top priority. In 1993, he launched a vocational-training program in Maine's public high schools. He even published a book in 1994 calling for better education of "the middle half of the ...
Delightful Dividends.(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: STEVEN T. GOLDBERG Investors can't get enough dividends. Those who invested in our six picks of a year ago ("Here's to Dividends," March 2005) made out well. The stocks returned an average of 13% to January 17, two percentage points ahead of the gain of Standard & ...
The Dark Side of Spitzer.(Eliot Spitzer)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Andrew Feinberg I've been a fan and supporter of Eliot Spitzer for years. Wall Street is a cesspool, rife with corruption and sleaze, and the Street needs a fire-breathing prosecutor like New York State's attorney general to clean up the sludge. That's what Spitzer ...
Stock Picking as Chess.(securities investment)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Katy Marquardt Investing in solid companies with short-term woes is a lot like playing chess, says Michael Carmen, manager of Hartford Growth Opportunities (symbol HGOAX; 888-843-7824; 5.50% sales charge for the A shares). "It's all about figuring out what will be ...
Time to Trash Your Junk.(junk bonds)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Ilana Polyak Holders of junk bonds, take note. You are heading into the danger zone. Don't be blinded by those fat total returns of the past three years. This may be the year you learn why high-yield bonds are called "junk." Even fund managers who rode junk ...
Riddle of the Sphinx.(hedge fund)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: DAVID LANDIS Rydex sold Sphinx as a relatively safe hedge fund because it tracked a hedge-fund index. But now Sphinx is collateral damage in the implosion of commodities-trading firm Refco (see "Testing Its Mettle," Feb.). Refco's bankruptcy filing led to the freezing ...
No Second Banana.(Quaker Strategic Growth beating the index)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: KATY MARQUARDT Most of you probably know about Bill Miller, whose Legg Mason Value fund has outpaced the stock market a record 15 straight years. But few investors have heard of the man with the second-best market-topping record: Manu Daftary, who has led Quaker ...
Back in Balance.(home buying)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Patricia Mertz Esswein Home buyers and sellers gearing up for high season are encountering a swing in the balance of power: more parity between supply and demand, sellers and buyers. Last year, home sellers worried about missing out on thousands of dollars in profit if ...
The Mortgage Squeeze.
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Patricia Mertz Esswein Home buyers and refinancers, take note: Your choices aren't pretty. Rates on popular adjustable-rate mortgages have spiked, and fixed rates are creeping up. Plus, "exotic" mortgages that let you pay interest only or choose the size of your payment ...
A Pause that Refreshes.(sabbtical)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Jane Bennett Clark Swill the coffee, fight the traffic, shuffle the papers, field the phone calls, coddle the clients, answer the e-mails, fight the traffic in the opposite direction. Do it again tomorrow. Thirty years hence, will you regret the things you didn't do, ...
Boost Your Score.(credit score)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Kimberly Lankford Pop quiz: Which affects your credit score more, getting married or having overdue library books? Surprise answer: A library fine that goes to collection can shave 100 points off your credit score--and boost your annual interest payments by hundreds ...
Chalk One Up for Parents.(credit scores)
Mar 01, 2006 ... Byline: Janet Bodnar You know the national obsession with credit has gone too far when parents are urged to pass on their credit score to their kids. That's what happened to Jerry and Carol Huller of Centennial, Colo., who wrote to me last summer. Their daughter Melissa was ...
Refund Guaranteed.(life insurance)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Kimberly Lankford Jorge Ramirez is expecting a life-insurance payout before he dies. If he lives another 20 years, he'll get a windfall of more than $26,000. Last year Ramirez, 42, bought a term-life policy with an interesting new twist: If he survives to the end of the ...
Head Into Battle with Backup.(filing tax returns)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Mary Beth Franklin There's an old saying that no job is complete until the paperwork is done. But at tax time, organizing your paperwork should come first so that you have the documentation you need to trim your tax bill. If some of that paperwork has gone missing, ...
Is My Brokerage a Scam?
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Kimberly Lankford I've come across a brokerage firm called ChoiceTrade.com. I'm impressed with the firm's commission schedule, but I'm also suspicious: Each time I call, the same person answers. How can I find out if the firm is legitimate and is insured by the ...
Credit Cards.(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: JOAN GOLDWASSER Young people often base their credit purchases on the amount of their credit limit, reports a study by professors Amar Cheema, of Washington University, in St. Louis, and Dilip Soman, of the University of Toronto. As a result, when less-experienced ...
A Loophole is Born.(income tax, exemptions, dependents)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Mary Beth Franklin Call it the law of unintended consequences at work. A new law designed to standardize the definition of who qualifies as a child for tax purposes has opened a gaping loophole that could be exploited by upper-income families with young children and ...
Deposit Security.(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: JOAN GOLDWASSER Jimmy Carter was president the last time Congress increased limits on accounts that are covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., from $40,000 to $100,000. Now lawmakers have authorized a new ceiling of $250,000 for savings held in retirement ...
Passions Pursued.(recreational learning)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: DAN RUTHERFORD, JANE BENNETT CLARK, DAVID BENJAMIN, ROBERT FRICK We sent writers to four popular camps for adults, and they found one common denominator: joy. For Jorma Kaukonen, Hot Tuna guitarist and a founding member of Jefferson Airplane, joy is about making ...
Camry's New Body, Old Soul.(Toyota Camry, car)(Product/Service Evaluation)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Mark K. Solheim When Toyota approached the fifth redesign of the Camry, it wisely decided to tread carefully and not mess with success. After all, the reliable-if-staid Camry has been the country's top-selling sedan for most of the past decade. And yet Toyota is touting ...
Simplify Your Life On the Road.
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: Sean O'Neill EASY LISTENING Like audiobooks but lose patience with cassette, CD and MP3 players? Consider a Playaway self-playing audiobook, which comes with one AAA battery and earbuds. All you have to do to listen is press play. There are currently 32 ...
I Asked Successful People How They Made It.(My Story)(Brief Article)(Column)
Mar 01, 2006; ... Byline: AS TOLD TO SEAN O'NEILL I've always wanted to make a hit documentary. I have worked as a cameraman for decades, shooting TV news and other video. I've also produced some documentaries, but few got a wide audience. In 1987, I read a magazine article about why ...
Rankings: Top-Performing Stock Mutual Funds--One Year.(Investing)
Mar 01, 2006 ... RANKINGS: Top-performing stock mutual funds--one year HOW TO USE THE TABLES: Diversified funds are categorized by the average market value of their holdings. Funds that invest in stocks of all sizes are included in the Midsize category. Investment Style describes the kinds of ...