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Preparing for 'Taxmageddon'
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Retire Here, Not There: Tennessee
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PLAYWhy Facebook Stock Won't Soar Like G....
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The 5 Biggest Muni Defaults Ever
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Cut Travel Costs With Free Gas
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PLAYBlackRock Manager Still Sees Opportu....
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Grad School: Higher Degrees of Debt
smart ideas
Dyan Machan
Websites Wooing Tomorrow's Thomas Edisons; Machan: An 'industry of failure,' flooded with folks trying to build a better spatula.
SmartMoney.comEveryone wants to be an inventor. So when I had the opportunity to test-drive an idea at Quirky, a company that helps people commercialize their product ideas, I jumped at the chance.
Small Businesses Go Solar; Machan: With the price of solar power dropping, some small firms are seeing the light.
SmartMoney.comInstalling solar power at their Shelter Island, N.Y., Ace Hardware store seemed like the right thing to do for the planet, say owners David Gurney and Meredith Page. But now that the brother-and-sister ownership team have the system, ...
Obscure Insurance That Hurts Small Businesses; Machan: If you can't get a so-called surety bond, you aren't invited to the party.
SmartMoney.comConstantly stuck between a rock and a hard place," is how Dominic Dunlap describes his business, DCG Roofing Solutions. Finding work isn't the problem: There are all kinds of government contracts to be grabbed near his Des Plaines, Ill., ...
Lessons From Failed Franchises; Machan: Franchise success stories get a lot of press, but one in 10 fails each year.
SmartMoney.comGetting info about how to start or buy into a franchise is easy. Finding out how many of the nation's 825,000 franchise units go belly up can be devilishly hard. The International Franchise Association doesn't keep such ...
How Food Fads Can Nourish a Start-Up; Machan: Going gluten-free may be good for you -- as well as for these companies.
SmartMoney.comShould you have wanted gluten-free pizza in the hamlet of Fountain Hills, Ariz., a little more than a year ago, you would have been out of luck. Now three pizzerias in town sell it. That's a reflection of the current antiwheat ...
Goldman Sachs + Warren Buffett = Not Many Jobs; Machan: Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs's joint program should be cranking out jobs by now. Why isn't it?
SmartMoney.comGoldman Sachs announced in 2009 that it would invest $500 million and partner with Warren Buffett to help small businesses grow and create jobs. The response was enthusiastic: Certainly with that much star power, business genius and ...
Lady Gaga, Small-Business Icon? A new business school case study says entrepreneurs could learn a lot from the over-the-top pop star.
SmartMoney.comShe's on track to earn $100 million this year, she's won five Grammy Awards, and she's the most-googled person of all time. And now Lady Gaga has earned another distinction: entrepreneurial icon. Her meteoric rise from NYC ...
Small Manufacturers Rethink 'Made In China'; Rising wages and quality concerns are leading some to bring production back to the U.S.
SmartMoney.comLike scads of other small American companies, Simple Wishes, a Sacramento-based maker of breast-pump bras, has been having its products manufactured in China. But lately, co-owner Joy Kosak has had second thoughts. The company's ...
Why Some Entrepreneurs Call ADHD a Superpower; Some small-business owners say they've been able to harness the strengths that come with their learning disability.
SmartMoney.comPeople who have it sometimes like to call it their superpower, but in reality, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a learning disability. Still, it's surprisingly common among high-achieving business founders, and ...
History Lessons for a Pet-Food Start-Up; Pets.com may still be the most famous failure of the dot-com era; the founders of PetFlow.com are studying it closely.
SmartMoney.comIn the New York City offices of PetFlow.com, three Pets.com sock puppets sit prominently on a shelf. "A reminder," says PetFlow cofounder Alex Zhardanovsky, "of what not to do." Nearly a dozen years after the original ...
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How to Rollover a 401(k)
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The Reignited Tech Sector
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Why a 'Balanced' Portfolio May Not Work
Arends: That 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds your adviser is pushing might not work.