We all had a rough year with the stock market, and we all know how much money our 401(k) and IRA lost this past year. We’ve also seen our home values drop, and we’ve watched our friends and family go through painful foreclosures. So, where do we invest our money? CD’s? [...]

I don’t like to dwell on the past, but I was curious how much you all lost in your 401(k) this year. Obviously, this is personal information, so you can share with us the percentage lost rather than an actual dollar amount. My money was pulled out at the end of October, because [...]

Over the weekend, Bernard Madoff of Madoff Funds, was arrested for securities fraud, and he has admitted to swindling hundreds to thousands of investors out of $50 billion dollars over an undisclosed period of time. Madoff has been in business managing investments since 1960, but he also ran a hedge fund that was basically a [...]

Last night I had trouble sleeping, and for some reason, I started thinking about industries that are tanking and will be a value for investors in the future. So many of us are scared by the media when they throw out words like recession and depression. We automatically think we’re going to lose [...]

I am starting a new section of Money Crashers that will be labeled under the “FAQ” category. These are questiions that I either receive from my contact form, questions I hear people ask on radio/TV, or questions that I hear people asking in everyday conversation.
Should I Cash Out/Stop Contriibuting to my 401(k) [...]

Here’s the Op-Ed from Warren Buffet in today’s NY Times encouraging investors to buy American stocks and stock stashing your cash under the mattress. If you’re going to listen to anyone during tough economic times, you need to listen to WEALTHY people, not the media and not other poor people in tons of debt. [...]

It’s the latest doom and gloom headline from the financial world. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below 10,000 points at the closing bell today, and it was the first time it closed below 10,000 since 2004. It first hit the benchmark of 10,000 in 1999 at the height of the dot com [...]

You know that the economy is on shaky ground when the hottest topic in personal finance is making sure your bank deposits are insured. Many of us never think about what would happen to our money if our bank closed its doors. Almost all traditional commercial banks insured their deposit accounts up to [...]

The recent news of the financial turmoil on Wall Street is unsettling. For younger folks like me, it’s even more unsettling, because my generation has never been old enough to remember financial problems like this in the past. Older folks know that we’ve rebounded from situations just as bad or worse than this [...]

For those of you who have life insurance, and for those of you who are looking to buy life insurance for the first time, here is a fair warning from your faithful Money Crasher’s host. It’s easy to get ripped off, just like every other insurance product on the market. The problem with [...]