Many in the news industry are holding their breath for good results. The New York Times Company has stated the new pay system would not affect the millions of occasional visitors to the website but would allow the company to cash in on the loyal visitors. The actual fundamentals of the plan have not been developed in full yet, including how much it would cost for the flat-rate fee. For many years, publishers have relied on support of digital advertising to support their online presence but since advertising is dramatically decreasing in the last two years, publishers are hoping to recoup more money from their regular readers than they would end up losing from advertisers.

NYTimes.com is the most popular newspaper website in the nation claiming more than 17 million readers a month just in the US according to the latest Nielsen poll. In addition to its fame, NYTimes.com is also a leader in revenue from advertising income. This fact means the company has more to lose if the move doesn’t work. “We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right.”
Times Company chairman and publisher of the newspaper Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in an interview.

Any site visitor will continue to have full access of the home page and be able to read individual articles through search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing for free. Subsequent article clicks will be tracked toward the monthly limit. The Wall Street Journal and Newsday also charge for access to major sections of their Web sites as well as smaller outfit including The Financial Times, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Albuquerque Journal currently. Many more online newspaper sites are expected to join in the process in 2010 and beyond.

Readers who have already sent in emails to the newspaper stating they would support the new fee-based browsing were already outnumbered by those consumers refusing to pay for visitation.

NYTimes.com to Charge Loyal Readers in 2011 was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

There are plenty of great online photo sharing and file sharing tools available, and not every one of the services available is appropriate for every situation. For example, if you want to share photos with your friends, family, and anyone else who might be interested in seeing them, you might want to put your photos on Flickr, but if you don’t want everyone in the world looking at your photos, you should probably consider a more secure option.

If you want to share files with others online, you can use services such as rapid share, but then just about everyone in the world will be able to access them because there’s no security at all. If you’re concerned about security and want to share confidential documents with others, you could setup something like an SFTP server, but that requires significant technical knowledge. Alternatively, you could simply email your photos and files to others, but that doesn’t work for large files, and you will still need to use encryption software such as PGP to protect your data.

There are also some professional sharing services online that you have to pay for, but can be well worth it if you need to share confidential files with co-workers or family members and don’t want the world to see them. Each of these services offers different features, so you’ll need to compare them and make sure the service you’re looking at is offering everything that you need for a reasonable price.  For example, some might give you the ability to have an online calendar, but might not allow you to share large files, so make sure the service you sign up meets your individual needs.

Options for Sharing Files & Photos Online While Maintaining Your Privacy was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

Here are my favorites from the week:

• Debt Freedom Fighter from Discover Debt Freedom presents 3 Indicators that a balance transfer credit card is right for you.
• AJC from How to make $7 million in 7 years … no scams, no schemes! presents Horses are not for courses …
• Money Answer Guy from Money Answer Guy presents How to Compare Lenders Online.
• Debbie Dragon from Empowering Mom (that’s me) presents Today I’m Grateful for a Recession-Proof Business.
• CindyS from Oh My Aching Debts presents Personal Finance Game.
• Little Thomas from Soon to be Debt Free presents Everything I Thought I Knew About
  Budgeting was Wrong . . .

A Funny Carnival of Personal Finance Has Been Published (#175) was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

With the vast expansion of the cell phone industry and internet communications, the need for payphones is now a thing of the past. Out of the 300 million people in the United States, over 250 million of them have cell phones! The 50 million Americans that don’t have them are largely children and the elderly who don’t have much of a use for a cellular phone.

One thing we’ll no longer have to worry about with the demise of the payphone as a means of communication in the United States is a crime called “shoulder surfing.” Criminals would take video cameras to airports and pretend to be filming their family and instead be filming travelers enter calling card numbers. The scam artist would then turn around immediately and sell those codes throughout the country within just minutes of filming it. By the time the passenger got to their destination, their card would already be stolen and it’s too late for them to do anything about it.

We won’t have to worry about people stealing our calling card numbers anymore, but these same types of criminals have now moved to just stealing cell phones and using them to make all sorts of expensive international calls, leaving customers with bills of several thousand dollars at the end of the month. One way to reduce the damage if your phone is stolen is to call your cell phone company and have them block international long distance calling, that way any criminal that got a hold of your phone won’t be able to make expensive calls overseas.

Just as we moved from the telegraph to the basic analog phone, we’ve now made another technological leap from traditional analog phones to personal communications devices. With the one of the largest operators of payphones in the United States going out of the business, surely the payphone is going the way of the dodo.

The End of the Era: Payphones Going Away in the United States was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

We need to keep a good balance of risk and reward in our investments in order to ensure that we are earning a decent interest rate, but not take on too much risk. In order to determine how much risk you can take on with your investment, you first have to ask yourself what this money is for.

Is it for short term savings that you might need to use in the near future? Is it for emergencies only in case you lose your job or there’s a medical problem? Is this money for a savings goal that is under five years, say maybe a down-payment for a mortgage on a house? If this is the case, you want to avoid taking on any significant amount of risk. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for your investment to recover if it drops in value for the short term, so you want to be sure that the money’s there. You should put this money in a high-yield savings account at a place such as Emigrant Direct, ING Direct or HSBC Direct. You’ll earn around 4% to 5% APY on your money, and it will be 100% FDIC insured.

If the money that you have to invest is for retirement, or for long term wealth building, it’s okay to take on some more risk. You’re investing for the long hall, at least 5 years and probably a lot closer to 20 or 30 years down the road. If your investment goes down in the short term, it’s not a big deal because you won’t need that money for a few decades. If this is the case, you should not feel hesitant about investing money into quality mutual funds or rental real estate (if you really want to become a landlord).

Before you invest money any where that’s not federally guaranteed, you really need to do your homework. Make sure that you understand the investment and why it will make money. You also want to make sure that the investment has made money in the past and has a proven track record. Don’t put your money into any security lightly! It’s definitely worth contacting a fee-only financial advisor to help you choose your investments if you are not extremely comfortable with investing and business.

Why a Higher Interest Rate Isn’t Always Better When Investing was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

According to the Arizona Republic, both the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission have been receiving complains at a much higher rate about fraudulent business opportunities being advertised. In response to the increased number of scams being pitched, the FTC launched a program called “FAL$E HOPE$” in an attempt to protect investors from being scammed.

These pitches are frequently advertised in local newspapers and on the internet. They will come with all sorts of promises about the money you can make and very little detail as to how that money is supposed to be made. Some of the scam artists are even pitching their “business plans” in high-scale places such as hotel ballrooms in an attempt to make you believe that they have gained some sort of wealth from their “system.”

If you were to respond to one of these advertisements, you and a number of other potential victims would be invited to a presentation of the alleged business system or investment strategy. If you actually attended one of the meetings, you would find yourself in the middle of a pep-rally. There would be a lot of excitement and very little substance.

If you find yourself hearing a pitch that just sounds absolutely amazing, head on over to eBay and search for the name of the company. You might be able to find the same material being sold to you for just pennies on the dollar. These are often protest auctions from people who got ripped off by the company and don’t want anyone else to suffer their fate.

Don’t get pulled into one of these “business opportunities.” If the idea or system was extremely profitable, the people pitching them would be making use of the system to make money, not trying to sell the idea to other people!

Business Scams Heat Up as Economy Cools Down was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

Since Social Security’s future is rather shaky and we simply cannot depend on receiving our full benefit, we have to supplement that money by saving for retirement on our own. Fortunately because of the power of compound interest, we can put a small amount of money away each month and over time that money will grow and snowball to be a significant chunk of change by retirement.

For example, if you were 25 and invested $100 a month into a decent mutual fund, you would have a pile of $500,000 by the time you retired. That would be plenty of money to supplement your Social Security income and allow you to avoid an impoverished retirement. If you save any more than that, you could even improve your lifestyle when you retire.

When you are doing your retirement planning, you should put your money inside of your company’s 401K plan if they offer any sort of match or into a Roth IRA. Either of these vehicles will allow for growth without having to pay taxes on your earnings every single year. If you’re not terribly familiar with the issue of finance, it’s definitely worthwhile to sit down with a fee-only financial advisor and have them look at the options you have for retirement. They will be able to help you come up with a plan that will allow you to retire quite comfortably by doing some simple planning ahead.

Social Security Bankrupt by 2042, Plan Your Own Retirement. was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

As part of our advertising strategy, American Consumer News has the option to advertise some of E-Loan’s products. We recently receive a message from them which stated the following, “In order to stay ahead of the current mortgage cycle and enable E-LOAN to maintain its leadership position in the industry, E-LOAN will begin scaling back some operations/programs to reduce its cost structure.” The program they were mentioning in the e-mail was its internet affiliate advertising program.

E-Loan made no statement as to what other divisions and programs they would be scaling back. E-Loan will likely also be laying off a number of employees as they stated there will be a “resizing of E-LOAN’s work force and reduction in cost.” The cost cutting measures seems to be of quite a significant size and a company-wide activity. These actions indicate a clear lack of capital, and in order to be able to remain profitable, E-Loan will significantly need to cut-back on their business expenses.

It’s no surprise that more of the major banks are being hit by financial problems because of the sub-prime loan debacle. Almost all of the major nation-wide banks are hurting because they over-extended credit to people who in all honesty could not afford to pay them back. E*Trade, Bank of America and E-Loan are the first banks to reveal how public their financial problems are, but there is no doubt that more banks will come forward and make drastic changes in order to remain profitable.

Late breaking rumors even indicate that there may be massive lay-offs at Citibank in the near future. Upwards of 45,000 people could be laid off, possibly even today. We’ll be sure to keep you informed about any major announcements the company makes.

Featured Link: Using a secured loan can save a homeowner hundreds in interest when compared to an unsecured loan, due to the fact that secured loans are secured against a property means that lenders are willing to reduce the APR on a loan due to the reduced risk.

Falling Like Dominoes: E-Loan Next Major Bank to Get Hit By Sub-Prime Mortgage Woes was created by and is property of American Consumer News.

For the last five years or so, many of the nation’s major banks and financial institutions have been originating all sorts of non-traditional mortgages such as interest only loans, adjustable rate mortgages, mortgages with balloons, fifty year mortgages, and a whole slew of other financial products that no consumer should ever buy. Unsurprisingly, many consumers could not continue to afford their mortgages as they adjusted upward and the home-buying market is very weak right now, leading to all sorts of delinquencies and foreclosures and now it’s starting to catch up with Bank of America and E*Trade.

All sorts of rumors are flying about a potential bankruptcy over at E*Trade. Said rumors actually dropped their stock price by 60% after the news hit. After news of a potential buyout or takeover hit, it rebounded slightly. Unfortunately there are 60,000 individuals who will be out of luck if E*Trade were to file bankruptcy. These people have more than $100,000 invested into FDIC insured accounts through E*Trade and would be out of a lot of money if the company were to go bankrupt. If you fit into this category, drop your savings inside of E*Trade to less than $100,000, that way you won’t lose your money if the bank goes under.

The exotic mortgages that Bank of America were giving out are starting to catch up with them as well. The financial institution had to provide $600 million dollars to avoid having the share-price of their money market funds dip below $1.00. Traditionally money markets are designed to keep at exactly a price of $1.00 per share, and it’s considered very bad if the price ever drops below that. Bank of America had used money from their investors in money market funds and invested that money by loaning it out to people in all sorts of exotic mortgages. When the real estate market collapsed in on itself, the price was dangerously close to “breaking the buck.” BOA did the smart thing to replenish its money market fund, because if the share price had dropped below $1.00, most investors most likely would have taken their money elsewhere.

Banks made a major mistake by offering mortgages to people who cannot afford to pay them back. One of the major financial magazine’s covers this week features a number of major bank presidents and the headline, “What Were They Smoking?” in regards to the sub-prime mortgage mess. Chances are we will see other banks hit hard times because of woes in the real estate market. Make sure that your money is at a solid and performing bank and that you do not have more than $100,000 at any particular financial institution.

E*Trade and Bank of America Get What’s Coming to Them for Offering Exotic Mortgages was created by and is property of American Consumer News.