Are you worried about being audited? The fear may be overblown as only 0.86% of taxpayers had their federal returns examined in 2014. Last year, 7.5% of millionaires had their returns scrutinized. Much of this is down to low staffing at the IRS. In 2011, during more prosperous times for the agency, the IRS audited…

SHOPPERS SPEND MORE IN JULY Retail sales rose 0.6% last month according to Commerce Department data, topping the 0.5% gain projected in a Briefing.com poll of economists. This was great news after the flat June reading (which was initially recorded as an 0.3% decline). A SLIGHT DIP IN HOUSEHOLD SENTIMENT Falling 0.2 points to a…

A GREEN LIGHT FOR A RATE HIKE? According to the latest Labor Department report, employers hired 215,000 new workers in July – 77,000 of them in professional, business, education, and health care occupations. The jobless rate held steady at 5.3% while the U-6 rate (unemployment + underemployment) ticked down to 10.4%. Monthly hiring totals have…

Some millionaires are reluctant to talk to their kids about family wealth. Perhaps they are afraid what their heirs may do with it. In a 2015 CNBC Millionaire Survey, 44% of families having at least $1 million in investable assets said that they had not yet told their children about their future inheritance. Another 27%…

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE DIPS WITH STOCK DECLINES July brought an 8.9-point drop for the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index; it fell to 90.9. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index held up better, losing 3.0 points in July to descend to a mark of 93.1. PENDING HOME SALES SLIP; PRICE INDEX TICKS UP The National Association…

EXISTING HOME SALES UP, NEW HOME SALES DOWN According to the National Association of Realtors, residential resales increased 3.2% in June with the median home value hitting an all-time peak of $236,400, 6.5% higher than a year ago. New home buying subsided 6.8% last month with the median sales price at $281,800, representing a 1.8%…

Americans do many things with their money and invested assets, most of them on the up and up. There are exceptions, however – cases in which people unintentionally break the law, flirt with illegal behavior, or pay federal tax penalties for their indiscretions. Here are a few examples, from the cavalier to the ridiculous. Rounding…

CONSUMER & WHOLESALE PRICES INCREASE The Labor Department announced a 0.3% June rise in the headline Consumer Price Index, following the 0.4% advance for May. This left annualized consumer inflation positive for the first time in six months (+0.1%). June brought a 0.2% gain for the core CPI, which is now up 1.8% across the…

America once experienced something called “moderate inflation.” It may seem like a distant memory, but it could very well return in the second half of this decade. A remote possibility? Most economists think the Fed will start raising interest rates in late 2015 and take them higher in 2016 through a series of incremental hikes…

Life insurance is hard. It’s hard to know if you have the right kind. It’s hard to know if you have enough. And it’s hard to know if you need any at all. The insurance companies have made it even harder by coming up with bewildering names: whole life, term life, universal life. Some life…