What's ahead for Coca-Cola's earnings?

Investors thinking about Facebook should consider a mathematical riddle that shows how growth stocks can get overvalued so easily.

As older parents approach death, they often leave lengthy to-do lists for their children. Here's how to deal with your parents' stuff while preserving family harmony and finances.

Mortgage rates have been hovering at historic lows for months, but some homeowners are waiting for even better deals. That could be a mistake.

After a miserable 2011, mutual funds have gotten off to a great start this year—but not for the reason many fund managers are citing.

Consumers who got a chunk of frequent-flier miles as a reward for signing up for a new Citibank credit card are upset that Citi has sent a list of recipients to the IRS. Does this mean such rewards are taxable?

Economic data sent U.S. stocks surging higher; the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. added 243,000 jobs in January; and Facebook filed for an initial public offering.

Washington is making it easier for workers to purchase lifetime-income products in retirement-savings plans—and insurers are following suit.

Washington is making it easier for workers to purchase lifetime-income products in retirement-savings plans—and insurers are following suit.

A quirky and complex investment class called master limited partnerships has been one of the market's best performers of late.

The new Mint.com app for Android has just been released, and it’s everything you’d expect from the team that brought the intuitive navigation and easily-understandable visuals of Mint to the web. The new app is easy—easy to learn and easy to use!

And to prove it, they tested it on me—a 20-something writer that’s techie enough to have customized an old PC but luddite enough to have never used one of those new-fangled Android tablets.

And I have to say that I’m impressed! The new app brings all the power of Mint.com to the Android tablet, allowing you to quickly understand the story of your finances without wasting your time. This is tops for me, because I need to take charge of my finances but I don’t want to spend more time doing it – especially in front of my old PC.

The Overview Screen – Everything You Need to See at Once

Mint built its app around an easy-to-access overview screen that shows you everything you’d immediately want to see in order to understand where you’ve been spending and where you need to save in order to maintain your budget. Most of the time, all I needed to do was glance at it quickly. Two seconds in and I knew exactly what I wanted to know.

Of course, the main screen features Mint’s signature “wheel,” that great multi-colored pie chart that shows how much money’s going to gasoline (too much), to alcohol (too much) and to groceries (Eh…). Tap on the wheel once to enlarge it, hold a finger down on it, and you can spin it around. Stop the wheel and a smart little window displays how much you’ve spent in that category in the last month or takes you to a list of your transactions. It’s pretty fun and definitely easy.

If “Wheel of Fortune” is not your style, a side-flick replaces the spending-by-category wheel with a bar graph that shows spending over time. Thus, I quickly saw I spent way more money last-minute shopping around Christmas than in all of November, reminding me once again that I need to just bake pies for my family next year!

The Budget Bar

One of the most important features on the overview screen turned out to be the budget bar because it shows how much I have already spent against my budget. Another tap pulls up other budget bars for each of my spending categories. Now, I have an easy way to see when I need to slow down my spending. I like to think of it like a breathalyzer for my wallet!

However, it’s the bottom of the main screen that actually contains the Holy Grail—the streaming feed that warns of due bills, suspicious activity and low balances and offers advice on how to save money. This feature may not be news to regular to Mint users, but for you newbies out there, Mint both watches your back and shows you great deals from partners.

The benefits of warnings on due bills, suspicious activity and low balances are pretty obvious, so I’m glad that Mint included this feature from the website to the app. But I’m really glad that Mint also included the partner offers. I never seem to make the time to search for better interest rates at other banks or insurance companies, so I love that Mint finds these money savers and money makers for me! At the end of the day, these recommendations are still the main reasons why I share Mint with my friends.

An App Wizard in Five Minutes or Less

In summary, the new app basically lets you use enjoy all the benefits of Mint but from the convenience of an Android tablet. As a bonus, it’s a snap to learn. If you’re already familiar with the features of Mint.com, you’ll know what to look for and you’ll know what to expect. If you’re new to Mint, I guarantee you’ll figure out everything you need to know about the app in five minutes or less, because it’s pretty easy to tap your way around.

“Mint’s New Android App: A User Reivew” was written by Sydney Jarod.

 

A recent study by Experian breaks down how much discretionary income Americans have and what exactly they are doing with it. All in all, Americans spend an estimated $1.47 trillion annually on discretionary goods and services. For most, the money after taxes, bills, and basic needs are covered is hard to come by, which means that a select few are spending some major bucks.

Click on “Launch Infographic” to find out where Americans are spending their discretionary dough.

After a decline from 1990 to 2004, the percentage of U.S. births that occurred at home increased by 29%, from 0.56% of births in 2004 to 0.72% in 2009.

A recent trip to the neighborhood farmers' market inspired Martha Rose Shulman to spend the next six days cooking with kale.

In the United States, almost 40 million people are hospitalized every year, according to the Health Cost Utilization Project. The number of uninsured hospital stays has grown by 42% between 1997 and 2009, the last year for which statistics are available.

If you get sick and require medical care, either in or out of the hospital, you may run into several consequences, even if you have a gold-plated healthcare plan. Here are four situations you should expect and plan for in case you develop an illness.

Health Insurance Coverage

The impact of an illness on your health insurance coverage depends on both the illness and the provider. Your coverage may or may not extend to the illness you have and your coverage may be capped or limited, leaving you exposed to paying out of your pocket. The real challenge comes if you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, such as diabetes or asthma. Health insurance companies can change the terms of their policies on an annual basis and you may find that they will no longer cover you for your existing illness.

If you don’t currently have health insurance, you may have difficulties being accepted for a policy at all. If you do get one, your rates are likely to be significantly higher than average. Proposed legislation will preclude insurance companies from dropping coverage in the event of illness, but it is still a very real threat currently.

Co-Pays and Deductibles

The vast majority of health insurance policies include required co-pays and deductibles that can eat into your savings. Co-pays represent the portion of medical costs that you must pay in order for the insurance company to pay the rest. For example, your policy may have a co-pay of 20%, meaning that you have to pay $200 of a $1,000 medical bill and the insurance company will pay the remaining $800. Deductibles are the amounts you have to pay before any of the insurance kicks in.

For example, a policy may state that you have to incur (and pay for) $3,000 of medical costs before the co-pay split kicks in. You can plan ahead of time for the deductible, as it is a known dollar amount. The co-pay can be unlimited so, if you have a serious illness or have been in an accident, you could be out of pocket thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Tiered Levels of Care

Each health insurance policy has its own rules about what procedures it will and will not pay for. As medical knowledge expands and new treatments become available, often health insurance lags behind. If you become ill, you may be faced with the decision of accepting an older (and perhaps less effective) treatment that your insurance company has approved, or paying out of pocket for a newer solution. If you are diagnosed with a progressive disease like cancer, where immediate treatment can improve the prognosis, you may be pressured to make a difficult monetary decision about your health.

Dropped Life Insurance Coverage

Even after you recover from an illness, you may still encounter insurance troubles. Some illnesses are considered by life insurance companies to be markers for further illness and the chance of death. For example, a seizure could indicate further seizures or epileptic events in the future, which puts you at higher risk for death.

Life insurance companies guarantee coverage for a set period of time, however, they have no requirements to renew your coverage. You may find yourself unable to secure new life insurance, thereby putting your financial and estate planning at risk.

The Bottom Line

Becoming ill could be one of the most financially impactful events in your life. Take some time to review your health and life coverage while you are still healthy to ensure that you understand the potential financial consequences of sickness. In particular, make certain that you have access to available funds to cover deductibles. Work with a financial planner or CPA to ensure that you have the coverage you need.

“How Getting Sick Affects Your Finances” was provided by Investopedia.com.

 

Readers solve the mystery of a 43-year-old healthy and active woman who suddenly falls asleep and can't be awakened.

With home values falling, many owners are counting on a tax break. So why are county assessors making it harder than ever to get one?

Could a coach bring back the intellectual vibrancy from medical-school days for one doctor, the way a music teacher inspires constant growth?

$100 billion: That’s the number that has been tossed around Wall Street in recent weeks as the social-networking juggernaut quietly began the process of becoming a publically traded company. Yesterday, investors finally got the information they needed to make a more informed choice as Facebook filed papers with government regulators declaring its intent to sell stock to the public.

Facebook’s Closely Guarded Secrets Facebook’s hotly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) filing briefly crashed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website last night, as gaggles of investors and financial journalists downloaded the massive S-1 document.

Facebook’s S-1 was full of information and little factoids that, up until now, were closely guarded secrets of the notoriously enigmatic Silicon Valley phenom. For the first time, the public saw how much money Facebook has made over the years  – and how it spends it. With this information finally public, investors can now come up with their own valuation for Facebook.

A $100 Billion Valuation

Founder Mark Zuckerberg (along with a whole slug of investment banks and big private investors) think that a $100 billion valuation is right on the money for the company. That would mean Facebook, an eight-year-old company, would have a higher valuation than more-established giants, like Goldman Sachs or Amazon.com. Zuckerberg would become worth around $26 billion if the $100 billion figure came true, making him one of the world’s richest men at the tender age of 27.

Determining the value of Facebook is equal parts art and science; there are thousands of things to consider and hundreds of moving parts. But at its core, a company’s stock price is basically worth the present value of its future cash flows, augmented by the firm’s propensity to grow is revenues.

How Does Facebook Stack Up?

Well, the firm is rapidly growing its revenues, which is a good thing. But revenue growth, although still rapid, has started to show signs of slowing down. In 2010, Facebook’s revenues jumped up 154% from the previous year to $1.9 billion, as the firm started to rapidly expand across the country. But last year, revenue growth was up by just 88% from 2010 at $3.7 billion. The slowdown in growth is very troubling, as it means that the firm’s earnings potential may not be as great as some might have hoped.

Investors are happy to pay a premium for a company if they see it rapidly expanding. While Facebook is expected to continue growing its revenues, it may not be as fast as some investors expect, given the high valuation that the company claims. After expenses, Facebook made $1 billion in profits last year (valuing the company at 100 times earnings). Multiples that high have not been seen since the dotcom heyday of the late 1990s. To put it into perspective, Google currently trades at 20 times its current profits.

Trouble Ahead?

It’s hard to really make out the firm’s future potential earnings power given some uncertainties. The company warned in its S-1 that users may eventually lose interest in the website (remember MySpace and Friendster?).

Additionally, Facebook depends on advertising to supply 85% of its revenues, with one company, Zygna, the online social-gaming company, providing 12% of that revenue. A slip in advertising dollars could send revenues plummeting. To make matters more complicated, Facebook is concerned that more and more people will choose to access Facebook via their mobile phones. That’s a problem, as they have not developed a way to advertise neatly through smart phones just yet.

Will Investors Agree?

Facebook’s valuation will ultimately be determined in April when its shares hit the market for the first time. The bankers will announce Facebook’s initial stock price usually the day before the stock goes on sale to retail investors. The firm valued its class B stock at around $30 a pop in December. It will be interesting to see if investors agree with that number.

Cyrus Sanati is a frelance financial journalist whose work has appeared in dozens of leading publications, including The New York Times, BreakingViews.com, and WSJ.com. Follow Cyrus on Twitter @csanati

We blitz through the hype of America's favorite sporting event.