Facts About Insurance For Leased Cars

Leasing a car is a convenient way to get more car for less money. But that doesn’t mean you can skimp on auto insurance – in fact, a lease may require you to buy more even coverage. Since the leasing company owns the vehicle, it wants to protect its investment in case you’re in an accident or your car is stolen.

Before you lease your next car, here are a few things to know about car insurance for leased cars.

1. Coverage is mandatory

Before you drive off the lot in your new car, make sure you’re covered. If you don’t already have car lease insurance to transfer to the new vehicle, you’ll need to buy it before you leave the dealership or leasing office. Most states require some minimum level of liability insurance, and your leasing company may require more than state-minimum levels. Find out more with our Auto Insurance Coverage Guide. Read more…

Ever wondered how much of your income tax pays for national defense? A number of online tools exist to help you answer that question. However, because each tool calculates government spending and taxation differently, you’ll find a wide array of answers. Below are various ways to figure out the answer.

The Data Viz Challenge Winners

Roughly 40 design teams competed for $10,000 in prize money offered by Google and Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. The challenge was to create engaging data visualizations that make it easier to understand how the government spends our taxes. Winners were announced on Tax Day—April 18th.

The following designs offer the most useful data for researching your personal tax contribution to national defense:

WhereDidMyTaxDollarsGo.com: The winner of the competition, this site asks you to enter your annual income and filing status. Based on your input, it generates a series of tables and charts telling you how your 2009 taxes were spent by the government during 2010. One table reports your federal taxes owed, applying the standard deductions and breaking down your obligation by tax bracket. Two more tables show your Social Security and Medicare taxes for the year. Based on these numbers, the site reports your total taxes owed and your effective tax rate for the year.

WhereDidMyTaxDollarsGo.com lists spending on national defense at 17% with an additional 3% for veterans’ benefits and services. Read more…

The following is a guest post by Jasmine from Check N’ Go.

With the miserable state of the economy today, some are desperate to find ways to reduce their debt without filing bankruptcy or losing their home and savings.  The sad reality for many is that bankruptcy and foreclosure are the only events on their financial horizon.

In order to attack debt and free yourself from financial woes, it’s going to require some creative use of existing resources and changing the way you approach debt reduction.

Change Your Habits Read more…

Darwin is the author of Darwin’s Money where he takes an evolutionary approach to money. In this rapidly changing world, there are always new opportunities to save money, make more money and expand your horizons.

If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly thinking about different business ideas and models that could work out. Through either addressing an unmet need or making something better or inventing the next Facebook, you could be deriving a nice side-income outside your routine day job and have an eventual payday down the road when you want to quit or move on to the next thing. I just watched The Social Network the other night and it put me in the mood to start thinking more about business startups again. I’ve split out a few ideas and ventures I’m involved in by “Old Economy” and “New Economy”. They can both earn you a handsome income and even turn into a full-time gig. The New Economy ventures tend to be more “Scalable” though.

Old Economy Side Businesses Read more…

Sunil is the author of the Extra Money Blog, a blog that discusses how to get more out of life, whether it is more financial abundance, freedom or the flexibility to design a life on your own terms.

Did You Know that you can make a lot more by working overseas and save a significant amount in taxes at the same time?

The US tax system is not the most lenient by any means. American tax payers shell out effectively almost 50% of their incomes to the Government year after year.

When a US Citizen goes to work abroad, the first $90k of income is shielded from income tax by the IRS. Married couples get twice the exclusion at approximately $180,000. And since a couple can live relatively well-off on just one US salary in most countries, many couples and families find themselves not paying US income taxes at all when working abroad.

Why Would Foreign Companies Hire Americans? Read more…

I had no idea what I wanted to do in the future.  I only knew that I didn’t want to continue working at the bank.  I needed some way to support myself, and it would have been foolish to just quit such a well paying job.  I needed to figure out a few things first.  I needed to figure out how much money I spent each month so I could comfortably build a sizeable savings in order to figure out what I wanted to do with it later.  I detail this process here:  How I Was Able to Retire at 24.

I threw around a lot of possible scenarios including starting businesses and biking across Africa, or moving to France to study French.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew in time an idea would come and then I would strike.

How much do you need to leave your job and start your own business? Read more…