Surety Bonds Hold Finance Professionals Accountable

When you're making significant financial decisions, you shouldn't have to worry about the reliability of the professionals who are working with your money. Surety bonds are a means of financial protection that can provide additional reassurance. Unfortunately, although many industries mandate the use of surety bonds to protect their consumers, the consumers themselves are oftentimes unaware of this means of protection. The basic idea behind surety bonds is to limit fraud and other unethical ...

The Best Bonds are Low Risk

There are numerous investment options that are available to an investor such as stocks, bonds, precious metals and stones etc. Bonds are a good investing option for those who want to invest in a low-risk instrument. They are basically instruments of debt security. When someone purchases a bond, he basically lends money to the entity issuing the bond for a specified period of time. In return for this, the entity pledges to pay interest to the lender on a pre-decided rate of interest till the time...

The Risks of Investing

All types of investments have risks, whether you're investing in stock funds, bond funds, or even money market funds. Stock funds * Market risk: One of the most significant risks you face is the volatility of the market. Stock prices overall can decline—sometimes dramatically—over short or even long periods. You can reduce market risk by holding stock investments for a long time—at least ten years. * Investment style risk: Returns from the types of stocks a fund invests in—such as growt...

I Bond Rates

The big news as of late is the new I bond rates. With the current fixed rate of 1.2%, I bonds bought between now and the end of the October will pay 4.8% for the first 6 months, and then 6.92%(!) for the next 6 months. The question, then, for those of you considering buying I bonds, is whether to buy before the end of October or before the end of November. (more…)