The prolonged low rate environment has been a blessing to home equity borrowers. Rates for both fixed and variable rate home equity products are lower than they were 6, 12, and 24 months ago. This week, the average fixed rate home equity loan dipped for the 7th time in the past 9 weeks, 6.49 percent. The average variable rate home equity line of credit was unchanged at 5.26 percent.

The slow drift lower in rates has been good news regardless of whether you’re in the market for a variable rate line of credit or a fixed rate home equity loan. The lower fixed rates are attractive to lump sum borrowers or even those looking to refinancing a home equity loan taken out in years of higher interest rates.

And the variable rate line of credit is unlikely to show any type of upward movement as long as the Federal Reserve is planted on the sidelines holding interest rates steady. The amount borrowed from the home equity line now will eventually see higher rates, but that move is not in the foreseeable future.

For more information on home equity loans and home equity lines of credit, and to check home loan rates in your area, go to Bankrate.com.

I’m Greg McBride.

Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/video/mortgage/home-equity-rates-041912.aspx

The top 10 percent of wage-earners bring home $150,000 per year, and, according to the results of a Gallup poll, that’s the median salary required to be rich.

Men by and large stuck to the $150,000 figure in the poll, whereas women aimed a little lower, at $100,000. Location also was a factor, with city dwellers saying $200,000 per year would make them rich, while those in rural areas said $100,000. Only 15 percent of respondents said $1 million or more in annual salary is required to be rich. For 18 percent of the respondents, $60,000 a year would do it.

As far as total net worth, $1 million makes you rich according to the survey, but interestingly, that number is the same as it was in 2003. Perhaps the recession has forced Americans to lower their goals and figure out how to live with less.

How much money would you require in salary or total net worth to consider yourself rich?

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/will-150000-make-you-rich/

“I think it’s an infringement on the public’s rights to live their life the way they choose to,” Chasteen, president of the city’s employee association, told local TV affiliate WFAA.

This week, Fort Worth, Texas, became the first major municipality to officially consider a ban on tobacco use by city employees. No decision is expected until after May 8, when HR is scheduled to submit its report to the City Council.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, smoking and secondhand smoke cost the U.S. on average a staggering $193 billion annually. It’s estimated that each employee who smokes costs their employer more than $11,000 per year in additional health care costs, disability payments and time lost from work.

Corporate employers have been taking steps recently to discourage workforce smoking in an attempt to shave their health insurance costs. But rather than ban tobacco outright, employers have opted to shift more costs onto their employees who smoke by adding a surcharge to the higher premiums that health insurance companies already charge tobacco users.

The New York Times estimates that the number of employers who charge smokers extra for health insurance has doubled in the past two years.

Employers used to tread lightly back when smoking was considered a “health status” for fear of being charged with discrimination under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. But since the feds reclassified smoking as a “behavior,” smokers’ rights have been eroding. The Affordable Care Act opens the door for employers to impose up to a 50 percent surcharge on employees who smoke, beginning in 2014.

Fort Worth city leaders were reportedly intrigued by Baylor Healthcare Systems, one of the state’s largest employers, which stopped hiring smokers altogether in January. Not everyone is pleased with the development however.

“These policies represent employment discrimination,” says Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. “It’s a very dangerous precedent.”

It’s hard to miss the irony that the iconic Marlboro man should meet his OK Corral moment in “Cowtown,” the very heart of working-class cowboy country.

What are your thoughts? Should a municipality you support with your tax dollars have the right to ban smokers?

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/insurance/worker-smoking-rights-up-in-smoke/

Home Equity

• 5.26% (line of credit)
• 6.49% (loan)

Rates on loans backed by home equity barely changed in Bankrate’s weekly survey.

The typical home equity loan fell 2 basis points to 6.49 percent. The typical home equity line of credit, or HELOC, was 5.26 percent, the same as last week. A basis point is one-hundredth of 1 percentage point.

Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/news/home-equity/interest-rates-041912.aspx

Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Photo courtesy PR Photos.

In an interview Monday night on ABC’s “World News,” anchor Diane Sawyer directly asked Romney if he was too rich to relate to the American public. Romney responded by deflecting attention away from his net worth and toward leadership of the country in a difficult economy. “This is a time when people of different backgrounds and different experiences need to come together,” he said.  “I happen to believe that I’m by far the best qualified in this race between myself and President Obama to help the American people get good jobs and rising incomes and eliminate the massive deficit that America’s facing.”

Romney also dismissed Obama’s suggestion that he release the past 12 years of tax returns, countering that Obama is simply trying to move focus away from the failure of his economic policies. “He’s going to try to make this campaign about the fact that I’ve been successful, that I’ve made a lot of money,” he told Sawyer, adding that Obama released two years of tax returns. “I’m happy to release two years of records, and that’s plenty for people to understand how I paid my taxes and the fact that I’ve been highly successful.”

Romney is wealthy by anyone’s standards (net worth of approximately $250 million and a multimillion-dollar home in La Jolla, Calif.), but he’s certainly not the wealthiest candidate in recent decades. That honor belongs to Ross Perot, a candidate in the 1992 and 1996 elections, who has a net worth of almost $4 billion. Others, including Steve Forbes, a candidate in the 2000 presidential election who is worth $450 million, have been far wealthier than Romney.

Some people believe a candidate who has been financially successful outside of politics brings a more realistic view to the table when it comes to improving the economy. Others believe that more experience in public policy makes the better candidate.

Do you believe a candidate’s personal wealth improves or impedes his prospects as a president?

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/is-romney-too-rich/

If you’re like most, you’ve never actually read your policy. Instead, you probably sat bobble head-like across the desk as your insurance agent hit the high points while you waited for the low point: how much your premium was going to cost.

And if you’re like most, you probably realize that’s a pretty cavalier approach to take when insuring not only your No. 1 asset but the roof over your family’s head and potentially your income stream should you or your family be liable for someone else’s injury or property damage.

Knowing our inate bobble-head tendencies, the risk hunters at the Insurance Information Institute of California, or IIIC, have broken homeowners insurance down into three essential questions:

1. Do you have enough insurance to rebuild your home?

2. Do you have enough insurance to replace all of your possessions?

3. Do you have enough insurance to protect your assets?

If your answer to any of these is a) I think so, b) maybe, or c) probably, you probably need to schedule a review – this time without the blank nodding. An annual review is a valuable exercise that can also save you money as your circumstances change and/or new insurance products and discounts come on the market.

In addition to replacement coverage to repair or rebuild your house, IIIC suggests looking into three additional options. Extended replacement cost provides an additional 20 percent or more overage to cover additional costs of labor and materials in a widespread disaster. Inflation guard automatically adjusts your replacement coverage to reflect inflation in construction costs. And ordinance or law coverage picks up the additional bill if you’re required to rebuild to new, stricter local building codes.

Where possessions are concerned, IIIC recommends doing a personal cost comparison between a cash value policy, which covers your stuff less depreciation, verses a full replacement cost policy, which IIIC estimates runs about 10 percent more than a cash value policy. If most of your stuff dates back to the Reagan administration, the latter may be the cost-effective way to go.

To protect your assets, homeowners insurance includes liability coverage, which pays for court costs and judgments to a maximum you set against lawsuits for bodily or property damage caused by you, your family and your pets. If your liability seems low relative to your risk ($100,000 is a common coverage amount), you might want to consider an umbrella policy that increases limits for both your homeowners and auto insurance.

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/insurance/3-questions-for-all-bobble-heads/

University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice hosted a meeting of 22 Chinese government officials to help them understand the best practices for charitable giving in the U.S.

“They were interested in everything,” says Eileen Heisman, CEO of National Philanthropic Trust in Philadelphia, who spoke about best practices in the nonprofit sector. “They wanted to figure out how to be supportive at the local level, at the federal level; they were interested in how laws for charitable deductions work.”

The emergence of private wealth in China has increased the curiosity in private foundations, donor-advised funds and charitable trusts that provide income to the donor while pledging the remainder to charity.

Over the past few decades, China has been opening its economy to more capitalism, leading to explosive economic growth and the acquisition of private wealth. Heisman says that development, plus the outpouring of public giving in the wake of the 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan province that killed an estimated 68,000 people, has helped fuel China’s interest in charity.

Heisman says she hasn’t seen this level of interest in how the U.S. administers corporate and private philanthropy from other countries but points out that our charitable system is sophisticated in part because our taxes are so much lower than they are in other developed countries. “A lot of other countries have higher tax rates, and the government takes care of the needs of individuals that private philanthropy takes care of here.”

What do you think of China’s interest in philanthropy?

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/china-looks-to-u-s-for-charity/

According to the Insurance Information Institute, by the time you’ve finished paying for the flowers, rings, parties and pictures, the average American wedding costs $16,000. That means you’ve likely bet $3,000-$6,000 in nonrefundable deposits that your big day will come off as planned.

If there’s a wedding in your future, look closely at wedding insurance in case your “I dos” don’t come off as planned.

Wedding insurance is a cost-effective way to hedge your financial risk.

“It protects the nonrefundable expenses, cancelation due to serious illness, injury, extreme weather, a missing caterer, a missing officiate, a bankrupt event facility. Even postponement; weather can play a big part in that,” says Janet Ruiz of Fireman’s Fund, which has offered wedding coverage since the 1990s.

Fireman’s Wedsure website offers cafeteria coverage for liability, special attire, cancelation-postponement, loss of deposits, gifts, jewelry, photography-video coverage and rental property, with policies starting at $95.  

What could go wrong? Wedsure’s claims department lists 10 real-life mishaps:

1. A tornado rendered the venue uninhabitable: $35,000.
2. The rings were stolen out of the groom’s home: $15,352.
3. The seamstress lost the bridal gown: $3,412.
4. The tuxedos were double rented: $2,278.
5. A drunk guest got into an auto accident: $500,000.
6. The photographer’s car was stolen with the camera and wedding photos: $15,000.
7. The reception venue went out of business: $8,500.
8. The disc jockey went out of business: $1,257.
9. The wedding gifts were stolen at the reception: $12,300.
10. Bridesmaid left a candle burning in the dressing room and the facility caught fire: $150,000.

Two years ago, Fireman’s added “cold feet” coverage in the event the bride or groom have second thoughts. There’s even a professional counseling rider for the party jilted party at the altar. But change-of-heart coverage only applies if the wedding is called off 180 days in advance, and only covers money spent by “innocent party financiers,” i.e., the parents.

“People think of the runaway bride, but what normally happens is, if people are going to bow out of a wedding, they usually do it a few months ahead of time,” says Ruiz. “That’s a much more normal occurrence and it does happen. I think parents would usually pay for that coverage.”

The III recommends you purchase homeowners insurance before the wedding to protect your wedding gifts as well as your luggage while you’re away on your honeymoon. If you’re taking your wedding rings and other jewelry along with you, be sure to purchase floater coverage, and be sure it will protect your jewels if you’re honeymooning in a foreign country.

Once you return, be sure to combine your auto insurance policies to take advantage of the multi-car discount as well as your newly-married status, which is sure to lower your rates.

A wedding is one of life’s great milestones. Wedding insurance can remove some of the financial worries so you can savor your big day.

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/insurance/insure-before-you-say-i-do/

A survey by Allianz Life found that while 49 percent of Americans said they were more likely to make and keep a New Year’s resolution tied to diet and exercise, only 43 percent said they’ll keep one that leads to better money management. Eighty percent said financial resolutions are not on their list at all for the new year.

The results could be attributed to where Americans feel they have control over their lives. The majority of respondents (35 percent) said they don’t think they earn enough to worry about financial planning. Twenty-three percent said they already have a financial plan, and 17 percent said the reason they won’t focus on financial planning is because they lack professional advice.

The survey also presented five economic roadblocks and asked respondents to judge the ones that were the most worrisome in 2011. Nearly half (48 percent) said unemployment, followed by the U.S. budget fiasco (23 percent), home prices/sales (15 percent), volatile stock market (10 percent) and the European debt crisis (5 percent).

Since the economy began its slide in 2008, many Americans were forced to go into basic survival mode financially. But while health is important, finances shouldn’t be put on the back burner. The recession hurt everyone, including the wealthy, but those who went into it with a solid financial plan that focused on saving and investing have come out of it poised to continue on the path to wealth. It’s never too late to begin putting a plan in place.

Do your New Year’s resolutions include a review of your financial plan?

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Article source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/your-waistline-or-your-wallet/