Business and Financial News

A reader e-mails:

Hi there Brent,  Nice story in the Sundays paper. We will be looking for all the tax breaks we can get this year. One of those is our donations. We have donated a lot of stuff to Goodwill and we have the cards they gave us. We had a garage sale and took pictures of everything before boxing the stuff up.

My question to you is, what is the maximum amount you can donate dollar wise? Also, is that amount the total or is it that amount for each place you donate?

It’s Only Money answers:

Your total donations to charities — cash and noncash — can equal 50 percent of your adjusted gross income. Full Article…

Reality TV wanna-be’s seem to be everywhere lately, taking their search for fame and fortune beyond the bounds of common sense. An interior designer from California appeared on a home improvement show while collecting disability insurance. Sadly for him, an employee for the insurance company was a big fan of the show. He was convicted for insurance fraud and tax fraud and had to pay the private insurance company more than $150,000.

Moral of the story – when you are disabled and on claim, everything you do can and will be used against you. Insurers are going to all lengths to terminate or deny claims.

Full Article…

Credit cards could be heavily used at Scottish ATMs. Full Article…

If you’ve ever wondered how things like debt settlement and bankruptcy affect your credit score, look no further.

MSN Money’s Liz Pulliam Weston asked FICO how these and other negative finance moves actually affect your FICO score.

The results are surprising (at least to me). The FICO company (Fair Isaac) is not crazy about giving away too much of its secret formula that determines a person’s FICO score, so Ms. Weston had them respond to a hypothetical situation where two people were hit with the identical situations, but started with different scores. Here’

Full Article…

The spending power of UK skiers’ credit cards has diminished. Full Article…