Money Talk – Page 7

Analysis, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

What you need to earn to be in the to 1%

July 19, 2019

Hint: Try aiming for the top 10% instead. Or maybe move to New Mexico.

When you think of the 1%, you probably think of people banking millions of dollars per year, traveling from vacation home to vacation home on their private jets, and spending tens of thousands without thought or care. Those people certainly exist, but they don’t all earn seven-figure incomes.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) published a study that looked at income inequality based on 2017 reported wages, and the results may be surprising. While the top 1% obviously out-earn the bottom 90% by a considerable margin, you don’t need to make millions each year to join them. And if you consider yourself relatively well-to-do, you may be in the top 5% or 10% already.

Continue reading… “What you need to earn to be in the to 1%”

Employment, Latest Trend, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Nearly 80 percent of employees would prefer one of these 3 things to a pay raise

July 19, 2019

It’s not always about the money, money, money.

Money can’t buy you love, but it can buy a lot of important things. Which is why it’s interesting that a recent Employment Confidence Survey by Glassdoor named some of the other things that employees would actually rather have over a pay raise.

Yes, we’re talking about perks–but not, perhaps, the ones you might think.

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Bitcoin, facebook, Legal Issues, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Consumer groups call for a moratorium on Libra until ‘profound questions’ are answered

July 16, 2019

Some 33 consumer and public-policy groups sent a letter Tuesday to five Congressional committees and federal regulators asking for a moratorium on the Facebook Inc.-backed Libra cryptocurrency.

“We call on Congress and regulators to impose a moratorium on Facebook’s Libra and related plans until the profound questions raised by the proposal are addressed,” says the letter. “We also urge Facebook to put its implementation of its plans for the new cryptocurrency, Libra, on hold until the Congress and regulators have an opportunity to assess and react to a far more detailed presentation than has yet been made public.”

Among the signatories are the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Reports, the Economic Policy Institute, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, and the Woodstock Institute.

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government, Latest Trend, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

India going cashless could be a model for the world

July 15, 2019

India aims to curb cash – but this time it wants to do it properly.

A cashless society wasn’t the original goal of the country’s draconian currency ban in November 2016. But when an acute shortage of banknotes gave a fillip to digital wallets, that purpose was added as an afterthought to justify an act of farcical state overreach.

The real innovation in mobile payments in India began a few months prior to the cash ban. It’s called a unified payment interface, or UPI. The name is clunky, but the idea is simple. One smartphone owner who’s a customer of Bank A can request a payment from, or initiate a payment to, another owner who has an account with Bank B. Neither party needs to know anything more than each other’s mobile number or a virtual ID. They don’t even need to use the same mobile app to transact.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

3 powerful ways crypto is completely going to transform our lives

July 10, 2019

You won’t believe it till you transact it

Its time to cut the crap. Humanity is on its way to decentralization. The choice is yours to become antiquity in the museum of fiat corruption, or a fast crypto Lamborghini fueled by blockchain on its way to peer to peer financial empowerment.

Lets no longer deny the future of money. It will be digital, it will be apps, it will be borderless and neutral. And it will be humanities biggest escape from the capitalist abyss of pyramidal driven greed destruction. Nakamoto will be proven to be the 21 century Houdini showing the escape route from the financial chains of banks and middlemen slavery. He introduced the technological way that will eventually free most of humanity from the parasitical power of cartels. And if you don’t grasp it yet fully, its OK.

Buckle up for these 3 biggest transformational changes crypto, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will bring us on the long run.

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Analysis, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Exactly how much it will cost you to retire well in every state in America

July 10, 2019

A comfortable retirement doesn’t come cheap.

While you may hear stories of people retiring on as little as $2,000 a month, the reality for most of us is likely to be much different. Indeed, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average over-65 household will spend nearly $50,000 a year. The biggest chunk of that is on housing at more than $16,000 a year, but health care is high on the list too (about $6,600), as is transportation ($7,500) and groceries ($3,815). (Of course, people who have paid off their mortgage can dramatically slash this amount, and there are other ways to save as well.)

What’s more, the annual spending for the over-65 set in some states is likely to be far higher, according to an analysis by personal finance site GoBankingRates.com. The analysis looked at consumption expenditures of Americans aged 65 and older for items like groceries, housing (includes utilities and housekeeping), transportation, health care and more; it then adjusted those figures to every state’s itemized cost of living index, and added an additional 20% savings buffer (so you can retire comfortably).

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Crypto-Technology, facebook, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Social Media

Facebook’s Calibra is a secret weapon for monetizing its new cryptocurrency

June 30, 2019

The newly formed subsidiary will build Facebook’s digital wallet

Facebook’s announcement this morning of a new cryptocurrency, Libra, and the nonprofit association that will oversee it raises questions about the future of global banking and Facebook’s role in it. But behind Facebook’s ambitions to create a quasi-nation state ruled by mostly corporate interests is a secret weapon, one the company hopes it can use to create another platform used by billions of people — and generate enormous new revenue streams along the way.

It’s called Calibra, and it’s a new subsidiary of Facebook the company is launching to build financial services and software on top of the Libra blockchain. At first blush, Calibra resembles a fairly standard payments company — but its tight integration with Facebook’s enormous user base could give it a significant advantage over any rivals. Thanks to its proximity to the technical development of Libra, and its ability to leverage WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, Calibra could very well become Facebook’s next big thing.

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Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Tourism, Travel

Bunq launches travel card to make foreign exchange fees disappear

June 15, 2019

Fintech startup Bunq provides full-fledged bank accounts. But if you’re happy with your existing bank, the company is launching a new free tier so that you can cut down on banking fees.

The Bunq Travel Card is a Mastercard without any foreign exchange fee. The company uses the standard Mastercard exchange rate but doesn’t add any markup fee — N26 also uses Mastercard’s exchange rate. Most traditional banks charge you 2 or 3 percent for foreign transactions.

When you get a card, you can then top up your account in the Bunq app. You can also send and request money with other Bunq users. But it isn’t a full bank account.

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Credit, Finance, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

This map shows Americans’ average credit score in every state

June 3, 2019

An aerial view of the downtown Minneapolis skyline and Loring Park.

Minnesota residents can brag about more than their 10,000 lakes — they typically have the country’s best credit scores too. As in previous years, the midwestern state has America’s highest average credit score, according to Experian.

Those living in Minnesota have an average score of 713, which falls into the “good” range of scores between 670 to 739, according to Experian. The company’s annual State of Credit report and state ranking is based on Vantage Scores, which range from 300 to 850. South Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts round out the top five states with the highest average credit scores for 2018.

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Banking, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

The next FinTech: Global “Open Finance” Infrastructure

May 1, 2019

“Open Finance “ — open-source financial services infrastructure built on public blockchains — may be the next major digitization narrative after Fintech. Driven by the transformation of analog liquidity (deposits in a bank account) to digital liquidity (tokens in digital wallets), the playing field can be leveled for offering financial services. As a result, new profit motives are introduced encouraging innovations not previously feasible.

Technology disrupting finance is a narrative that’s existed for a long time. The dream has always been for tech to digitize financial services, increase competition/access, reduce concentration risks, and improve customer experience. Many sales-pitches have tried to achieve this: from FinTechs, TechFins, API / Open Banking, to Permissioned Blockchains.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Blockchain: Separating fact from fiction

May 1, 2019

Blockchain is not a single technology. After having been conceived by Bitcoin creator — Satoshi Nakamoto, the world discovered the first known representation of this abstract concept through Bitcoin. Since then, hundreds of implementations have been explored. These are also called Distributed Ledger Technologies.

With hindsight, the blockchain concept is quite simple: it proposes an innovative information system architecture to process value exchange within open ecosystems. On the traditional web, information can be corrupted. Blockchain aims at securing high-sensitive data exchanges to preserve them from wrongdoing.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, Latest Trend, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Crypto lending on the rise: Credit volume of Genesis Capitol at over $1 Billion

May 1, 2019

Genesis Capital, one of the largest providers of crypto loans, cracked $1 billion in crypto loans in 2018. Despite falling bitcoin prices, the demand for credit in the crypto money market seems higher than ever.

In the fourth quarter of 2018 alone, Genesis, a type of crypto bank, will provide $500 million in loans. As a result, the US company accounts for almost half of its total lending volume in the fourth quarter of 2018; In total $1.1 billion in loans. The market is booming — and after the already south-facing market lost further value in November and December. This emerges from the quarterly report of the company.

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