Author: troyashbacher

Mortgage rates moved higher today, but significant federal data coming through later this week will provide a stronger direction.The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 6.19% APR, according to rates provided to NerdWallet by Zillow. This is 13 basis points higher than yesterday and three basis points higher than a week ago. (See our chart below for more specifics.) A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.You may have been expecting rates to go down, since last week the Federal Reserve cut short-term borrowing rates 25 basis points. But the Fed doesn’t set mortgage…

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series featuring the best retirement quotes and wisdom from top financial experts, leaders, and public figures. Other articles feature Warren Buffett, Michael Jordan, Mark Cuban and Jimmy Buffett.With memorable rhymes, outlandish characters and out-of-this-world stories, Dr. Seuss has captured the imagination of millions of people around the globe.From “The Cat in the Hat” to “The Lorax” and all those inspiring books in between, Dr. Seuss taught generations to challenge convention, make bold choices and embrace the unknown. From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance Become a smarter, better informed investor.…

Bath and Body Works has the single wick candles on sale for $5.95 today.  We have seen a bunch of sales on the three wick candles but these single wick are really nice for smaller spaces or if you prefer to change out scents frequently.   There is a limit of 24 and it looks like the sale is today only.  This is the lowest these tend to go so definitely a stock up price. There are a bunch of scents for the holiday season and some new releases for Spring. Click here to take a look. 

Within three years, this high school teacher bought eight rental units, giving him an extra $1,600/month in pure cash flow and helping him pay for his child’s future. Through a combination of affordable markets, “reverse BRRRRs,” and beginner-friendly renovations, Ben Vidovich has built financial freedom that middle-class America rarely achieves.With his first child on the way, Ben knew he needed something more than the retirement account he was throwing his money into. As a high school teacher living in one of America’s most expensive markets, buying a rental property nearby was far from possible, and Ben wasn’t sitting on piles…

In October, Blake Werner, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Arkansas, saw a highly speculative trade he made in the market go his way. Werner had put up $26,500 on a call option on a leveraged exchange-traded fund that bet against the biggest companies in the Chinese stock market. It had gained nearly 74% in value.Werner’s investment had grown to $46,000 and he wanted to let people know about the success. So Werner posted a screen shot of his brokerage account on Reddit’s WallStreetBets social-media forum, showing the details of the trade and his total account balance standing at…

There are a bunch of gift cards on sale today from 10-22% off.  This is a lightening deal from Amazon and won’t last long.   You can save on Bath & Body Works, Gap, Lowe’s, Taco Bell, Red Robin and multi cards that include Chipotle, Sephora and more. Click here to see all the cards included.  I do expect these to sell out quickly.

There’s no bulletproof way to identify an investment bubble before it happens, or even while it’s happening. We can only pinpoint bubbles in hindsight, after they’ve already burst — and lost a lot of investors a lot of money.But when people look back on bubbles of the past, like the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s or the housing bubble of the mid 2000s, many recall a vague feeling that something was off.It’s no secret that many experts have that feeling right now about the current AI boom. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the head of the world’s most prominent…

Jessica Hall is a retirement reporter for MarketWatch. She was an Age Boom Academy Fellow with Columbia University and completed the Leadership Exchange on Ageism. She previously worked at Mainebiz, the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, where she and her team earned a Scripps Howard Award for Community Journalism for a series on aging. She spent 17 years at Reuters, covering mergers and acquisitions, telecommunications and airlines. She started her career in Baltimore at The Daily Record and Baltimore Business Journal. She has freelanced for Barron’s and other publications.

Think you need a big bank account to invest in real estate? You don’t! There are several ways to either buy a rental property with low money down or turn an existing property into a rental with even less money out of pocket. Just ask today’s guest, whose first property now gives him an extra $1,200 in monthly cash flow!Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! For years, Alex Bozzy had wanted to get into real estate investing. So, when the time came to upgrade from his starter home, he jumped at the opportunity to convert it into a…

Last Updated: Dec. 15, 2025 at 7:48 a.m. ETFirst Published: Dec. 15, 2025 at 7:05 a.m. ETThe final full week of trading in 2025 is upon us. And as attention increasingly turns to next year it’s fair to say that most analysts’ base cases for equities are pretty bullish, with a median prediction of 7,500 for the S&P 500 SPX by the end of 2026, according to MarketWatch calculations.But not all observers are so chipper. Indeed, the headline of the latest note from the editorial board at BCA Research, led by chief global strategist Peter Berezin, encapsulates their caution: “Return of Nasdog”.