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When times are tough, it’s too easy to put tax management issues on the back burner. Sheltering your investment profits from taxes may seem like a remote concern when your accounts are a sea of red ink. And you may feel you have more pressing demands on your ...Read More

By LESLIE SCISM and LARRY LIGHT Death is inevitable, but good investment returns aren’t—especially those that rest on how long people live. The increasingly popular practice of buying rights to older people’s life insurance is risky, even downright perilous. People are living longer than actuarial tables say they ...Read More

When our then-22-year-old daughter told us in the fall of 2008 that she intended to move out of our house and live in New York City on her own, we told her it would be tough. She didn’t believe us. Mariana proved us wrong. She not only lived ...Read More

It now costs more to insure Californian municipal debt against default than it does bonds issued by the government of Kazakhstan, the central Asian country satirized in “Borat.” That is neither a joke nor hyperbole. Californian munis cost 2.6% of face value per year to insure, reports CMA ...Read More

By JEFF D. OPDYKE Even if the stock market goes sideways in 2010, a number of investors hope to profit through an options strategy known as covered calls. The strategy works like this: An investor buys a stock, but also sells a call. The call obligates the investor ...Read More

By MARY PILON After decades of collecting dust, charge cards are returning to consumers’ wallets. While the economy was roaring, charge cards took a back seat to high-limit revolving credit cards, which churned out high profits for card companies. But now, card issuers adjusting to the new economic ...Read More

By KELLY EVANS ROWAYTON, Conn. — The 1950s were big for Tupperware parties. The 1970s were hot for Mary Kay cosmetics. As this decade hobbles to a close, a new kind of social gathering is invading America’s living rooms: the gold party. Shannan DeCesare, 40 years old, brought ...Read More

By SAM MAMUDI The pact between a mutual-fund investor and the manager of the typical stock mutual fund is, in theory, a simple one: payment in exchange for expert stock selection. But financial advisers have long complained there are funds that don’t fully live up to that exchange. ...Read More

By JENNIFER WATERS Consumers who skipped the Black Friday deluge of deep discounting haven’t necessarily missed out on all the best deals of the holiday season. But shoppers who hold out too long, thinking retailers will cave with major price cuts late in the game, may find themselves ...Read More

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS SMYRNA, Ga. — For the first time in four decades in the luxury-home business, executives at John Wieland builders are thinking the unthinkable: Maybe houses in the South don’t really need a fireplace. They’re also wondering whether new homes require 4,700 square feet of ...Read More