News and Commentary

We are currently undertaking an effort to refresh all of the publications appearing on Money-Zine.com. That effort involves rewriting / editing over 1,000 articles and calculators that appear on this website.

We've been publishing mutual fund reviews for a little over a year now. As the market moves, so does the relative performance of the mutual fund families, and individual funds themselves. It's time to refresh some of that information.

We're taking the day off today to celebrate the publishing of our 1,000th article.

The IRS is starting to crack down on some credit counseling agencies that have been found offering substandard advice, or charging clients relatively high fees. Some agencies have also been found using high-pressure sales tactics, while pushing debt plans that are not always in the best interests of their clients.

Taxpayers throughout the United States flocked to the Internal Revenue Website in record levels this tax season. With a filing deadline of April 17, 2006, the IRS site set a single day record of nearly 3.4 million visits, eclipsing the prior one-day record set last season of 3.3 million visits.

If you haven't tried efile yet, you're in a shrinking minority. According to recently released IRS statistics, electronically filed tax returns continue to grow in popularity, as well as the use of home computers to file those returns.

There have been several developments affecting student loans in the news recently. The first has to do with the ongoing battle between private lenders and student loans available from the federal government. The second bit of news has to do with a recent ruling by the Supreme Court involving the payback of student loans.

Last week we refreshed the articles in our tax section, and this week we've updated our retirement section to reflect changes in 2006. In this publication, we are going to review the changes to 401k plans in 2006. The other retirement topics, including IRAs, 403b plans, and Roth IRAs, have already been updated.

Over the past several days, we have been updating our tax-related publications in anticipation of the 2005 / 2006 tax season. We were so busy adding new content in 2005 that we neglected the old, and we're in the process of reversing that trend right now.

The Dow closed out the year with its first decline since 2002. The Dow ended the year at 10,717.50, which is down 0.61% for the year. To remain in positive ground, the Dow needed to finish the year above the 10,785 mark. The S&P 500 Index, on the other hand, gained 3.0% in 2005.

Coming in January 2006, we're going to introduce a new section to Money-Zine.com, which will include news and commentary.