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An investor who put $10,000 in Amazon’s initial public offering in 1997 would have nearly $5 million today. Amazon’s valuation of $464 billion is now twice that of Wal-Mart. Putting some perspective on Amazon’s dominance, just 12 percent of the companies on the 1955 Fortune 500 list are still on the…

The personal finance guru in The New York Times, Carl Richards, has an interesting suggestion for staying out of debt, or at least lowering it significantly. His suggestion is to pay for the item first, by putting the money aside in a savings account. If you can’t wait to save up for the whole amount,…

In a recent survey, Wells Fargo has discovered the biggest regrets of wealthy investors. The survey questioned 1,983 respondents with $250,000 or more in investable assets. The top regret these investors have is simply wishing they had done a better job of investing. The second two regrets are interesting…

NPR.org reports that nearly 44 percent of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover basic expenses for more than three months in the event of a financial emergency like losing a job or unexpected medical care. They further report that almost a third has no savings accounts at all. --Jim L. Wilson…

As countries in Europe continue to see economically difficult times, many people are taking their money out of banks in order to protect their savings. Authorities say the citizens of these countries are concerned that their savings will disappear if their country should stop using the common currency…

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research 50 percent of American households are so financially fragile that they say they certainly could not or probably could not come up with $2000 to pay an unexpected expense. --The Week, June 24, 2011 p. 20 This does not fit well with the biblical admonition…

The parking garage at police headquarters in Ofunato, Japan has no room for cars. Instead, the garage is filled with hundreds of dented mental safes. Authorities believe most of them contain someone’s life saving which were swept out to sea by the recent tsunami. Officials say safes are still washing…