Forbes Personal Finances Information

In 2007, Steve Martin was on the Charlie Rose show to talk about his memoir Born Standing Up. He talked about his rise in comedy, and Rose asked him for his advice to aspiring performers.

The very wealthy are in unprecedented numbers turning to family offices to address many of their financial and life issues. To compete, many of the traditional providers such as private banks and brokerage firms are establishing their own family office practices for their wealthiest clients. This client-intense renaissance is a function of the appeal of the family office model to the wealthy. Basically, there are two types of family offices – single-family and multi-family offices.

Full time RVers have not applied for statehood - yet.  I have not been able to come up with a good estimate of what the population of RVania would be.  I have seen estimates of anywhere from 200,000 to 1,000,000.  The latter would put five states behind RVania in population.  I saw one estimate, a bit implausible, that 500,000 full-time RVers claim South Dakota residence.  That would mean that most of the people who live in South Dakota (Population 833,000 +/-) don't live in South Dakota.  If you are interested in the RV lifestyle you can find a lot of advice about every aspect of it by googling, including how you should pick your home base.  Not surprisingly, state income tax is a consideration.

U.S. Trust released its 2013 Insights on Wealth and Worth report on Tuesday. The nation's oldest trust company, under the wing of Bank of America since 2007, surveyed 711 wealthy American adults over the age of 18 with investable assets north of $3 million on a variety of wealth-related topics. The results revealed a significant amount of dissonance in this cohort, which U.S. Trust has labeled "high net worth investors."

Read full story for latest details.

When news broke on Sunday that Yahoo agreed to purchase the mindless ramblings of 100 million 13-year old girls Tumblr, the micro-blogging web platform, the immediate reaction of most Americans could be summed up thusly: ?Great?now which punk kid just became an overnight multi-millionaire??

According to many self-made millionaires, the times legal fees are voluntary – or quasi-voluntary – are ALL THE TIME. The general process is that lawyers do legal work and they send a bill. Sometimes they get a retainer – partial payment. It’s also likely the lawyers, depending on the nature of the work, provided estimates (which are rarely on target).

Out of state investors in real estate partnerships in high tax states sometimes get nasty surprises, particularly if partnership management is not sensitive to their concerns.  That appears to be what happened to Craig Olsheim based on a recent decision in the State of New York Division of Tax Appeals.  Mr. Olsheim inherited an interest in Fifth Avenue Building Associates, LLC in 2004.  In 2005, Fifth Avenue sold its only asset and dissolved.

Over $1 billion of post-war and contemporary art changed hands in New York last week, generating masses of headlines about record-breaking sales and record-breaking art. Larry Gagosian said that last week's evening sale of contemporary art at Christie's demonstrated "how broad the market is - as in deep pockets".

You probably won't be surprised to hear that early IRA withdrawal is a major trend in retirement investing.

Paying back that 20 dollars your buddy spotted you last night will soon be as easy as sending an email. With very little fanfare last week at Google I/O, a very useful new technology was introduced. You might have missed it among the flurry of other announcements. Google announced that Gmail users will be able to make peer-to-peer (P2P) payments with similar ease to adding an email attachment within a Gmail message.