Jan 03
I’ve always been impressed with the amount of financial info that Nicholas Financial (NICK) provides about its portfolio in its quarterly statements. I wish more companies were this forthcoming. I’ve assembled a portfolio summary on this spreadsheet of how they’ve done over the last several quarters.
By looking at this spreadsheet you can see why I’m such a big fan of the stock. The pre-tax bottom line is column N. However, the most important line to watch is column K, the provision for credit losses. That zoomed up during the credit crisis and it took out a huge chunk of NICK’s earnings.
The pre-tax yield before adjusting for credit losses has been remarkably consistent for the past 12 quarters, usually around 12.5%. The credi
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Jan 03
Before I pull together my January 2010 Net Worth report, I thought I would take a look at how I did in 2009. Overall, 2009 was not a bad year for me money-wise. I was only mildly impacted by the poor economy compared to many. My salary stagnated (salary freeze at my company) but I stayed employed and my company continued its 401(k) match. While both of my rental units turned over in 2009, I was able to fill the vacancies immediately and bumped one of the rents up a bit to help off-set rising property taxes.
I made a big cash purchase in 2009 when I bought my Honda Fit. My cash accounts have mostly recovered from the purchase. Read more…
Jan 02
Interest rates are still pretty low as we enter 2010, but I remind people that high nominal rates aren’t always better. Would you rather earn 3% with no inflation or 7% with 5% inflation? In any case, most of us have a chunk of cash and we should still try to earn the most no matter what the rate environment is like right now.
High-Yield Reward Checking Accounts
These are checking accounts that are still fully insured and pay a very high interest rate, as long as you jump through certain hoops each month. T
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Jan 02
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An excess payment is a fixed amount you must pay every time your insurer pays for repairs to your car. Usually, this is paid directly to the garage at the time you collect your car. However, if your car had to be written off, the excess amount that was agreed on the policy will be deducted from the settlement payment made to you.
If the other driver was at-fault, you can get your excess payment back from their insurance company. However, even though it is legally required for a driver to be insured, it is possible that you could get into an accident with an uninsured driver.
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Jan 02
This is the third and concluding article in a series that covers the perverse government bailout of AIG. The first piece covered how the insurance industry operates and where problems can arise, the second dove into the moral hazard of the AIG bailout, and this third piece will address not only the risks, but the history of over-the-counter [OTC] trading and what should be done to resolve its weaknesses. I do not believe that OTC trading should go away entirely. OTC trading has served a purpose for specialized transactions or when specific financial instruments are first traded.
When discussing over-the-counter instruments we are not talking about stocks trading via pink sheets or OTC because their price has dropped below exchange listing criteria.
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Jan 01
It’s 2010 already! We wish you all a happy new year. As of this date, The Smarter Wallet is just a little over a year old and continues to find its place in the wild world of the financial blogosphere. 2009 was a year of both personal and business growth for us, but it also was a year of financial challenge for so many people we know. So all in all, the year was a thoroughly mixed bag.
Image by the Huffington Post
We’d like to end the year and start the new one with a review of what went on in this blog. We
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