| Boomers' guide to financial freedom
Just yesterday your financial life was all about scrambling to make rent, learning what a 401(k) was and lobbying to get out of the cubicle and into an office. Now you're pushing 45 or 50, you've got a mortgage and college tuition bills, and you're the boss of a crop of ambitious 22-year-olds.
Face it, you've reached middle age. Sure, you have a long road ahead - three or four decades or more. But when it comes to your finances, you're not a kid anymore.
"Back in your twenties, you probably thought turning 50 was far in the future," says Mari Adam, a financial adviser in Boca Raton, Fla. "Guess what? Your future is starting now."
Will that future work out the way you want? Hard to say, but you'd be wise to see how you're doing so far. That means conducting a head-to-toe money checkup that covers everything from investing to insurance.
REUTEMAN: Severance tax increase a wild card for Ritter
Meg Collins, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, wrote a Jan. 7 letter to legislators that plainly stated the case: "COGA will oppose any efforts to increase severance taxes levied on the industry or the elimination of the . . . tax credit." To say that battle lines are being drawn is probably premature. "I would like to get to a place where we have some consensus on how to go forward," Ritter said last month. Good luck. Business editor Rob Reuteman can be reached at 303-954-5177 or reutemanr@RockyMountainNews.com. .
For an impoverished beauty queen, a stark choice: sex work or no work
What Natasha does on the bed in the dingy room with flaking orange paint so shames her she cannot bring herself to use the word. She calls it "so and so" and sells it here from midday to midnight, six days a week. On a very good day she makes £45. With each 30-minute session earning £2.50 that works out at 18 different men, many drunk, some violent. She tries to forget the very good days. "I don't want to be with a strange man who wants to kiss your whole body. Some suck you up and leave red marks. It's ugly." Natasha shuddered. "Ugly, ugly, ugly." Three years ago she won two beauty contests and was runner-up in another two, including Miss Best Legs, on Nicaragua's impoverished Caribbean coast. With dreams of modelling she boarded a bus for the distant capital, Managua.
Winter Beauty Boosters
RIDGEWOOD, N.J., Feb. 13, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Winter winds take a toll on everyone's skin, hair and even health. But there are ways to beat the bad weather's effects. Sometimes it's as easy as eating healthy, exercising and getting enough sleep. And sometimes we need a little help from the experts. Dianne deWitt has some great tips for staying healthy and beautiful this winter. She has smart ideas ranging from how to combat chapped lips to how to make sure you don't catch that cold going around the office. For example, Dianne points out that it's not just the winter winds that take a toll on our bodies. The sun can wreak havoc on our skin as well. UVA radiation is the principal cause of wrinkling and skin cancer, and it's important to realize that it can even penetrate glass.
Odd twist in Boca mall murders
An interlocking ring. Missing shoes and CD case. And a mysterious white Chrysler sedan. Together, these bits of seemingly random evidence from an unsolved Palm Beach County murder from last March could potentially lead investigators to the man who bound, robbed and killed a mother and her daughter in December. America's Most Wanted host John Walsh, who has profiled the cases extensively on his show, believes the person who killed Randi Gorenberg and the man who shot Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter Joey in December are one and the same. Police are not ready to say that definitively, but detectives acknowledge the similarities are too great to ignore. ''It's a fascinating mystery,'' said Paul Miller, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.
Death Valley: Scotty's Castle built with lots of snake oil
Everybody loves an eccentric, especially when the eccentric was rich enough to live a life of comfortable derring-do. Walter Scott and Albert Johnson were just such men. Scott, a former stunt rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, was, by all accounts, a charismatic alpha dog of a character, a teller of tall tales and a gold digger, if not in the literal sense. Folklore has it that, in the first decade of the 20th century, the man swaggered around the country using his entertainment skills to fleece investors in a nonexistent Death Valley gold mine. Who could resist a guy who carried huge wads of cash, produced thumb-size gold nuggets from his pocket and lit his cigars with $100 bills? .
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