Dear Dr. Don,
My children each received a $500 Patriot Bond in April 2003 from an aunt. I am not familiar with the process of a savings bond and how it matures. It is a Series EE. Could you tell me if the value can go over $500, or does it max out? Any information would be helpful. How can they make the most on these bonds?
– JoAnna Jump-start

Dear JoAnna,
A Patriot Bond is a physical (paper) Series EE savings bond inscribed with the term “Patriot Bond” and purchased at a financial institution. Physical bonds have a face value twice the price paid when they were issued. A $500 bond was purchased for $250 in 2003. As the savings bond earns interest it grows in value. Series EE savings bonds are guaranteed by the U.S. government to be worth their face value when they have been held for 20 years.

Series EE savings bonds purchased between May 1995 and May 2003 have an original term, or maturity, of 17 years, and an extended term out to 30 years.

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Each of your investments won’t be a home run, but your portfolio’s performance should at least be in line with your expectations. If the gap between your expectations and reality is consistently the size of the Grand Canyon, it’s time to re-evaluate your portfolio.

“If you’re managing your returns and your strategy, and for all of ’09 and 2010 your portfolio was way underperforming by 8 (percent) or 10 percent each year,” it’s time to find out what’s going wrong and why, says financial adviser Mike Masiello, president of Masiello and Associates in Rochester, N.Y.

To assess your investments’ performance, you need to begin with your original investment plan and a process.

“The keyword is the ‘process,’” says Drummond Osborn, a Certified Financial Planner at Osborn Wealth Management in LaPorte, Ind. “You truly need to have a process in place for how you’re buying, how you’re re-evaluating and how to make the changes.

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You can earn the top nationally available savings rate at Tennessee Commerce Bank with no restrictions.

Until Friday.

Then you’ll need to also open a checking account (there are several options) when you open your savings account to earn the top rates advertised in the Franklin, Tenn., bank’s special offer.

Tennessee Commerce’s savings account pays 1.50% APY on balances between $250 and $99,999. The bank pays 1.55% APY for balances between $100,000 and $249,999 and 1.6% on any balance above $250,000.

That beats the best nationally available rate of 1.31% APY offered by SFGI Direct. The Tennessee Commerce Bank deal is available on a national basis. Although the bank’s website says the special offer goes into effect April 1, if you sign up before then, all you need to do is deposit $250 to earn 1.50% APY.

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Jones Lang LaSalle is marketing five performing loans made up of 16 properties, including retail, self-storage and hotels. The loans are offered by an unnamed collateralized debt obligation asset manager.

The notes included are a senior mortgage participation interest, three senior mortgages and one mezzanine loan. The properties are four malls and one retail center in the Northeast and South ($50 million), eight self-storage facilities in Houston ($57.2 million), a strip center in Louisville ($30.4 million), live/work space in North Hollywood, CA ($17.6 million) and a hotel in Waikiki, HI ($34.9 million). The retail properties include the Galleria Mall in White Plains, NY (pictured).

Dustin Stolly, an SVP with JLL’s Real Estate Investment Banking team, says the company will call for indicative bids in mid-April. He says the portfolio will be available together or as pieces. “

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One child’s bedroom set: $1,300.

Having our check declined in front of everyone at Babies “R” Us: totally humiliating.

This is exactly what happened to my wife and I last weekend.

We have perfect credit, money in the bank, have never bounced a check or been late on a payment. And, we had well more than enough money in the account to cover the check.

So why was our check declined?

The store manger pinned it all on Certegy, the check clearing company.

A call to Certegy’s automated system gave me a less-than-justifiable reason: “As a preventative measure, we were unable to authorize your check because it did not meet our check acceptance criteria based on our risk models. Certegy carefully analyzes patterns of check writing activity….”

It continued to say that “these situations are rare.”

An agent said they had no further information. The company’s web

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From King Jaffe Joffer in “Coming to America,” to the voices of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” films and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” James Earl Jones has spent his professional life firmly implanting himself into the basic foundations of pop culture. Most recently Jones has been co-starring alongside Vanessa Redgrave in “Driving Miss Daisy” on Broadway. The show runs through April 9. 

James Earl Jones

Photo by Annabel Clark

What were some of the things you did to make a living when you were an aspiring actor?

My dad had a floor sanding business, and I would cover him when he was away. I got good at it, but also screwed up a few times. I would sand through the veneer, not knowing the difference between the veneer and real wood. Michael Conrad (the “Hill Street Blues” actor), had an apartment in the Village. Without knowing each other, he hired me and my dad to do his floor.

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When you don’t pay the bills owed upon an automobile note, the car company has no choice but to repossess the vehicle. When you miss a succession of mortgage payments, there’s sooner or later bound to be a foreclosure payment tacked upon the door. However, what happens if you spent to your credit card limit on dinners out or plane travel or any number of different goods and services that cannot be so easily replaced? For that matter, what if the credit card debt was employed to pay for health care or medical needs? At this point, debt settlement solutions could well be the answer for both you and the lenders.

Unfortunately, the settlement negotiation industry has come under increasing scrutiny and negative publicity of late, and too many Americans who may well benefit from the services of debt settlement solutions providers instinctively turn away from the program without even investigating just what the method could mean for their own household finances. Mos

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Dear Dr. Don,
I bought Series EE savings bonds for my daughter beginning in 1994 through 2008. Who can I talk to about what to do with them: a tax adviser, attorney, financial consultant or a Treasury Department representative? I can’t find any usable information on the websites.
– Sterling Savings

Dear Sterling, 
Perhaps you’re looking at the wrong websites. Along with Bankrate’s features on savings bonds, including a few Dr. Don columns, the place to go is the TreasuryDirect website. It’ll provide you with all the details about savings bonds — short of offering investment advice.

Bankrate can help you find the best CD rates nationally and in your area.

I recommend starting out by putting them all into the Savings Bond Wizard.

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People with large amounts of debt opt for filing bankruptcy when they do not find other alternative means of repayment. However, different programs of credit card debt consolidation have exceeded the trend of filing for bankruptcy. There were a number of reasons why people were disappointed by the earlier choice. It has not only hindered the prospects with the full financial default, but it has also affected their properties over the same time. And when it comes to property, then there is not only limited to monetary losses, but it is also a major emotional setback simultaneously. Therefore, people turned their attention to various debt consolidation programs, as the debt relief opportunity quickly came to occupy the minds of millions of creditors.

To be honest, both bankruptcy and debt consolidation have their individual advantages and traps. Read more…