On a hill high above Cleveland, Tennessee, stands a manor modeled after George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore. A stone-and-stucco pile topped by a copper dome, the house is perched on a 650-acre (263-hectare) estate that features two artificial lakes, a regulation-sized football field and a three- story tree house, plus stables, a greenhouse and an aviary. If this sounds [...]

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There is nothing like an inquisitive child to make you realize just how complicated the topic of money is. That’s what I ended up thinking after my 4-year-old daughter a few weeks ago stomped her feet, turned red and demanded to know why we did not own a summer house. It might have been funny [...]

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You first start learning about teaching your kids about money on that special trip to Wal-Mart when your child first throws a tantrum because you won’t buy her a Barbie doll. Some people will grab the child from the shopping cart and leave the store fuming and red in the face. Other parents might opt [...]

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Higher returns equals higher risk. It’s a basic fact of investing, yet working out just how much of a gamble you are willing to take with your cash is far harder to pin down. The other side of the coin is when investors get so caught up chasing high returns that they ignore the risk [...]

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I REFER to last Monday’s report, ‘Moneylenders target HDB sellers‘, which mentioned that ‘agents…introduce desperate sellers to moneylenders, and may get a fee for the referral, usually about $500 a customer’. The Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies does not support the practice of estate agents obtaining referral fees from moneylenders for introducing their clients to them. [...]

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When stock markets rallied dramatically last year, soon after the financial crisis, it was mainly the bold and the brave who leapt right in. Many others were wary. Was this a false dawn, only to be followed by more market mayhem? They were reasonable fears, given the prognostications of so-called experts. But now that the [...]

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READING the fine print just got easier, if you are an American credit-card holder. Last May, the authorities in the United States stated that all information, including applications and disclosures for that piece of plastic, has to be printed in at least 12-point font. These rules are not in effect here. But The Association of [...]

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