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There is no greater personal finance challenge than getting oneself out of credit card debt. Many people are taken by the ease of paying with plastic and quickly lose track of their spending. Others build credit card debt after being faced with a loss of income or unexpected medical bills. If you have taken on debt, or foresee the likelihood of doing so, what you need is a credit card that offers 0% introductory rate on balance transfers and purchases for the longest possible period. The Citi Diamond Preferred Card fits that bill, with an industry leading 0% APR for 21 months.

The Citi Diamond Preferred card’s 21 month 0% APR is remarkably long.  The only other card with the same 0% duration is the Citi Platinum Card.  For balance transfers, a fee of  3% of the amount transferred is charged. This

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WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a California law that limited the sale of violent video games to minors, ruling the restriction violated the free-speech principles in the 1st Amendment.

“Like books, plays and movies, video games communicate ideas,” said Justice Antonin Scalia. “The most basic principle of 1st Amendment law is that government has no power to restrict expression because of its content.”

The ruling came on a 7-2 vote.

Scalia spoke for five members of the court who ruled that under no circumstances could the government be allowed to protect children by limiting violence in the media.

“There is no tradition in this country of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence,” Scalia said in the courtroom. “Certainly, the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — have no shortage of gore. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed.” Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined his opinion.

Justice Samuel A. Read more…

Scott Burns of Assetbuilder has a new article that your portfolio beyond the often-cited S&P 500 index fund that you probably have in your 401(k) plan. During the recent financial crisis, nearly every asset class involving stocks crashed. Large cap stocks, small cap stocks, REITs, international stocks.

From January 2000 to December 2009, the total return (not annualized) of the S&P 500 was negative 9.67%. That means money that you invested in the S&P 500 in 2000 was worth about 10% less an entire decade later. This is the so-called “lost decade” that numerous media articles have focused on.

Well, if you’ve been following this blog since 2004 or many other similar ones, you would have also read about research and historical data that advises you to diversify your investments across some other asset classes. Here

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WASHINGTON, D.C.— David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, and Lisa Rickard, president of the Institute for Legal Reform, issued the following statement on the SEC’s adoption of whistleblower rules:

“In approving this new whistleblower rule, the SEC has chosen to put trial lawyer profits ahead of effective compliance and corporate governance. This rule will make it harder and slower to detect and stop corporate fraud – by undermining the strong compliance systems set up under Sarbanes Oxley to ensure companies take whistleblowers seriously. Armed with trial lawyers and new large financial incentives to bypass these programs, whistleblowers will go straight to the SEC with allegations of wrongdoing and keep companies in the dark. This leaves expensive, robust compliance programs collecting dust, while violations continue to fester, eroding shareholder value.

“We agree that the SEC should have access to the information it needs to detect and deter fraud. However, no

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Or at least that seems to be the opinion of about half of Canadian small business owners, who, in a recent survey, the American Express Small Business Monitor, say that they can’t concentrate on growing their business because they are spending too much time running it, but remain reluctant to hire outside help to share the workload.

Specifically, small business owners say that more than a quarter (26%) of every day is focused on activities they don’t consider core to their business, activities such as secretarial work (49%), technical support (48%), office/property repairs and cleaning (40%), and doing their own website construction (30%).

Why are Canadian small businesses so reluctant to outsource? The two main reasons are reluctance to give up control over any aspect of their businesses (56%) and that outsourcing is too expensive (52%).

Now you know and I know that these are silly reasons. As a writer/content developer, for instance, do I really need to maintain control over the cleaning of my office?

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1. Video Rental 2. Local Photo processing shops 3. Home moving companies 4. Newspaper Publishing 5. Formal Wear and Costume Rental 6. Apparel Manufacturing 7. Textile Mills 8. Record Stores 9. Wired Telecommunications Carriers 10. Video Postproduction Services

See the reasons why here at Yahoo Finance.