News & Opinion

For those of you who may have missed the State of the Union Address, here is a quick two-minute summary of President Obama’s speech.

For the full speech, watch this video.

For those who would like to read his speech, here is the full transcript.

You want to have fun but you don’t want to spend a lot of money. Fun does not always require a bigger spending budget. Fortunately, for our New York friends, we have a list of 101 Things To Do For $10 or Less from Time Out New York. The activities include movies, museums, music, dances, parties, food tasting, parks, bowling and more. They are heavy on fun and light on your wallets.

Do you know of a fun and budget activity? Let us know in the comment section below.

The US Mint website now states:

The United States Mint has eliminated the credit and debit card purchase of $1 Coins through its Direct Ship Program effective July 22, 2011.

The announcement has since ended the benefit of ordering the $1 coins, which allowed you to rack up credit card rewards (miles/points/cash back). They have remove the incentive for people to order these coins. I suspect that there will be a huge decline in the demand of the $1 coins after the elimination of the credit card purchase. Baltimore’s reserve bank is sitting on an increasing pile of dollar coins.

I made decent use of the credit card program while it lasted, although I was not aggressive as some people who have ordered hundreds of thousands of coins. I also did my share to help circulate the coins by promoting and spending them.

Obama: “We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business.”

What do you think of President Obama’s ‘State of the Union’ Speech?

President Barrack Obama announced on national television the results of his heated debates with the congressional Republicans on Monday to finally reach a deal to extend all the tax cuts for the lower and middle class Americans and also the wealthy class as well. Obama initially wanted to eliminate the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of  U.S. households, but the Republicans fought hard to keep them. After a period of battle in stalemate, Obama and GOP settled to an agreement. As a result, the tax cuts are extended for the lower, middle, and upper class Americans for two years.

Highlights of the proposed bipartisan agreement (from article below):

• Rates: Extends all income tax rates for two more years for all taxpayers.
• Estates: Applies a 35 percent tax on estates worth more than $5 million.
• Unemployment: Extends unemployment insurance for 13 months, providing benefits to 2 million long-term unemployed workers in December and 7 million over the next year.
• Payroll: Cuts payroll taxes by 2 percentage points for 2011.
• Credits: Extends increases in the Earned Income Tax Credit, the child credit and tuition credits adopted in 2009.
• Businesses: Allows businesses to write off 100 percent of their capital investments during 2011. The current write-off is 50 percent.

Read the entire article here.

http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_16793236

What is your opinion on the newly proposed tax cuts?

Quicken Online will discontinue service at the end of August 29, 2010. Quicken will continue to provide free financial account management through Mint.com, however you would need to create a new account on Mint.com if you don’t have one yet. The personal financial data on Quicken Online will be securely removed after August 29, however the user has an option to export the data to CSV before that date. Quicken will focus solely on Mint.com going forward.