Step by step instructions to tricks cash incidents Quick fixes for cash setbacks

A MONEY MISHAP—FOR EXAMPLE, an erroneous conclusion at assessment time, a bill you ignored or a sudden charge can get even the most sorted out individual off guard. In any case demonstration rapidly and you can likely settle, or in any event minimize, the monetary harm. 

1. You need to change the date of your skiing outing, however you as of now purchased the plane tickets. Quick Fix:the ideal situation is that you look into the change in arrangements inside 24 hours of booking the flight. A government standard gives that before that first day is up, you may scratch off a plane ticket and rebook charge free. After that, hope to pay up to a $200 change expense for household admissions on real aerial shuttles, in addition to any extra cost for the new ticket. (There are special cases: Jetblue energizes to $150; Southwest does not charge a change expense.) If you scratch off your trek, the bearer will provide for you a credit (short the change expense), normally useful for up to ten months. 
2. The $50 Groupon you purchased for $25 for supper at your neighborhood Italian eatery simply lapsed. Quick Fix:go ahead and utilize the Groupon. The sum you paid for the every day arrangement is still substantial after the special worth terminates (the same strives for Living Social coupons). Ask pleasantly and the restaurant may respect the full esteem, yet there's no certification. In the event that you know before the close date that you won't have the capacity to utilize a Groupon or Living Social arrangement, you can attempt to empty it through a resale site, for example, Couprecoup.com, a sort of Craigs rundown for every day bargains. You may need to offer at a profound markdown. 
3. Your pay expense bill is route more than you expected, and you can't concoct the cash by April 15. Quick Fix:file your return by April 15 and pay to the extent that you can. At that point hold up for the IRS to send you a bill for the equalization. That ought to take around 45 days, which will provide for you time to discover some or the majority of the remaining sum. You'll get hit with a late-installment punishment of 0.5% of the unpaid offset for every month, except that is a considerable measure better than the disappointment to record punishment of 5% a month. Keep away from the allurement to pay your expense bill with a Mastercard. You'll owe an "accommodation expense" of up to 2.35% of the sum you charge, in addition to investment on the off chance that you neglect to pay off the equalization by the due date. 
4. After an excursion abroad, you find that you have run up an eye-popping cellphone bill. Quick Fix:call your supplier and request a decrease. Be diligent, and remind the client administration rep of your history as a faithful client, says Logan Abbott, of Myrateplan.com. In the event that you were ignorant of the amount the additional minutes or information would cost, let the rep know. The uplifting news is that overage charges, which can run up to 25 pennies for every moment or $10 for every gigabyte, are not difficult to maintain a strategic distance from. All real bearers should now give content or email cautions to clients who approach or surpass their remote arrangement limits. Contact your bearer before heading abroad to see whether you can enlist in a prepaid worldwide bundle, or think about purchasing as an universal SIM card. Overall, use Wi-Fi however much as could be expected for information and telephone gets while you're out of the nation and you won't be charged by your arrangement. 
5. You recognize suspicious buys on your financial record and suspect that a con artist got your number. Quick FIX: Contact the charge card backer at the earliest opportunity to debate the charges and request another card. Your obligation is restricted to $50 on a Visa, yet American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa don't charge you whatsoever. In the event that you think that you have been the casualty of ID robbery, you could put a misrepresentation alarm on your record with one of the three credit agencies (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) so that moneylenders must take additional insurances before allowing credit in your name. It likewise qualifies you for a free credit report from each of the departments. The beginning caution stays on your record for 90 days, yet you can reestablish it. 
6. You stashed cash in a Roth IRA, yet a year-end reward put you over the cutoff for Roth commitments. Quick Fix:you can keep away from a 6% punishment on commitments you made in the year your pay was excessively high on the off chance that you withdraw your Roth commitments (and any profit on those commitments) by April 15. (For 2013, you couldn't help a Roth if your salary was more than $127,000 for singles or $188,000 for joint filers.) Even better: Contact your IRA chairman and request a structure to "recharacterize" your Roth commitment and any income on it to a conventional IRA. The length of you do the switch before October 15, 2014, you won't owe the punishment. In the event that you made commitments to the Roth in prior years, the executive ought to figure the amount of the income ought to be credited to the past years' commitments. On the off chance that you switch to a nondeductible IRA, you'll likewise need to document IRS Form 8606 to report the nondeductible commitment. 
7. The retail establishment mailings you threw ended up being bills for a charge you disregarded. Presently you've piled on $50 in late expenses. Quick FIX: The backer is inside its rights to charge investment, survey late charges, conceivably build the yearly rate and report misconducts to the credit authorities. Be that as it may in the event that you call client benefit and clarify the circumstances, you may get a break. Underline to what extent you've been a client and why this is a detached occurrence, and that you'd like to have the late expenses waived or decreased. On the off chance that the store has reported your misconduct to a credit department, ask that the report be withdrawn. 
8. The following data for a bundle you expected says it was conveyed to your home, yet its not on your patio. Quick FIX: The load is on the sender to find a missing package or repay you. In the event that it seems to have been a burglary, report it to the police; the vendor may oblige a police report. At that point call the trader with your following number, conveyance affirmation email and police report under control. On the off chance that the stolen bundle was a blessing from an individual, she can expect scope against misfortune or harm of up to $100. On the off chance that the quality was higher and she didn't pay for additional protection, you're out of good fortune. A shipper, for example, Amazon will have its own particular courses of action with transportation organizations set up. You can keep this from happening later on by having your bundles sent to your work environment or the closest mail focus. You can additionally oblige a signature before the bundle is dropped off, regularly for an additional $2 or $3. Fedex's "Conveyance Manager" alarms you to bundles headed to your location and gives you a chance to make arranges appropriately. UPS's "My Choice" messages you about conveyances and gives you a chance to reschedule or reroute your bundle. 
9. That blessing card in your wallet you've been intending to utilize? It lapsed. Quick FIX: Check for a client administration number printed on the once more of the card or on the retailer's Web webpage. You may have the capacity to have the unused trusts reloaded onto the card. In the event that that doesn't work, you may have the capacity to recover the money by recording a case for unclaimed property with your state. Yet the cases methodology could be a torment. Contingent upon your state, you may require the charge card number used to purchase the blessing card or a marked oath from the individual who purchased it. 
10. A bill gatherer continues calling around an obligation he says you owe. In any case you don't perceive the bill. Quick FIX: Tell the guest that you can't talk about the obligation until you see something in composing, says Gerri Detweiler, of Credit.com. The gatherer is obliged to send a composed notice of the obligation inside five days of at first reaching you. When you get that perceive (demand snail mail), you have 30 days to debate the obligation. Send a letter by confirmed mail or with conveyance affirmation expressing that you aren't certain you owe the obligation, and ask the authority to check it. That will purchase you time to explore whether you neglected to pay a bill or there has been a mix-up. An authority who declines to send you a notice via mail or debilitates to take you to court unless you pay quickly is most likely a trickster

FIVE BEST EUROPEAN STOCKS LIST

Years after the financial crisis swept across the world, Europe is ripe for investors. After 18 months of economic contraction, the euro zone, the 18 nations that officially adopted the euro as their common currency, finally emerged from recession last year.

Although Kiplinger’s expects another winning year for U.S. stocks, there’s a reasonable chance that European shares will do better (see “Outlook 2014” and “Investing Abroad: A Mixed Bag,” Jan.). The Federal Reserve has already started to scale back its bond-buying program, which has kept long-term interest rates low and which many analysts say has played a key role in levitating share prices in the U.S. The European Central Bank (ECB), which oversees a number of economies that are weaker than the U.S.’s, is likely to maintain more-  stimulative policies for a longer time, and that will be a key driver of European share prices, says Alec Young, a global equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ.

European stocks are also cheaper than their U.S. counterparts. The average European stock trades at 13 times estimated 2014 earnings, compared with a price-earnings ratio of 15 for U.S. stocks. (All prices are as of December 31.)

Despite improving economic data, Europe is hardly booming. Kiplinger’s expects gross domestic product in the euro zone to grow just 1% in 2014. The unemployment rate in Spain is a staggering 26%. Greece, with outstanding debt at 160% of its GDP, will almost certainly not be able to repay all it owes. Political turmoil in Italy may undermine that country’s fragile economy. But the overall recovery in Europe, though modest, is real, and lagging nations are expected to make up ground over the next few years.

Below we list five European stocks that should benefit from the blossoming recovery. Symbols and share prices are for American depositary receipts (ADRs). If you’d prefer to invest in Europe through a fund, you’ll find our best bets in the box on page 34.

Financials recover. The 2008 crisis hit the European financial sector hard. Many banks held sizable amounts of government debt from the troubled euro zone countries. Banks failed, and bailouts were needed. But the financial system in Europe has come a long way over the past few years. Government bond yields have stabilized, the European Union continues to enact banking reforms, and the ECB is holding down interest rates to promote growth. Two banks that should prosper are LLOYDS BANKING GROUP (SYMBOL LYG)and BANCO SANTANDER (SAN).

Lloyds, one of the most venerable banking names in the United Kingdom, might have fared better during the global meltdown had it not bought HBOS, a troubled British firm with interests in banking and insurance. The deal was announced in September 2008, just two days after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, a key event in accelerating the financial crisis. Lloyds’s ADRs, which traded at $48 in early 2007 and $19 when the deal was announced, plunged to less than $3 after the takeover was completed in January 2009 and ultimately bottomed at $1.34 in November 2011. After the British government bailed out Lloyds with several cash infusions, the company did some damage control of its own. It closed the worst of HBOS’s businesses and wrote down billions of dollars in bad loans.

Lloyds appears to be on the mend. Its business is concentrated in the U.K., where the economy and housing market are strengthening. (The United Kingdom is a member of the European Union but does not use the euro as its currency.) Lloyds, which lost money in 2012, was expected to have earned 36 cents per ADR in 2013, and analysts see profits of 42 cents per ADR in 2014. At $5.32, Lloyds sells for 13 times estimated 2014 earnings, in line with the average P/E for the financial stocks in Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.

Banco Santander, the largest bank in Spain, made it through the global recession relatively unscathed despite the significant, and lingering, damage to the Spanish economy. It helped that the 156-year-old bank diversified outside of Europe decades ago and has become a major institution in global banking. Latin America—particularly Brazil and Mexico—now accounts for 50% of Santander’s profits. Europe accounts for about one-third of the bank’s profits, with half of that coming from Spain. Santander posted strong results in the third quarter of 2013, and analysts see earnings growing by 20% in 2014, to 67 cents per ADR.

The ADRs, at $9.07, are nearly 60% below where they stood in October 2007. At 14 times estimated 2014 earnings, Santander is reasonably priced.

Consumer comeback. Better European economies should encourage the Continent’s inhabitants to spend more on the finer things. We like two companies that should benefit from Europe’s rising consumer spending.

ELECTROLUX (ELUXY), one of the largest household-appliance makers in the world, remained profitable through the financial crisis. More recently, the Swedish company, which gets nearly one-third of its earnings from North America, has been benefiting from the U.S. housing recovery. Business in Europe, which contributes about20% of profits, is expected to grow over the next few years. Electrolux is known for its namesake vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, as well as its Frigidaire refrigerators.

At $53, Electrolux trades at 14 times estimated 2014 earnings, in line with the P/E of rival Whirlpool (WHR). Andre Kukhnin, an analyst with Credit Suisse, rates the stock a “buy” and sees it rising 13% over the next year. (His price target is based on Electrolux’s Swedish-listed shares, which are priced in kronor.)

Spanish fashion retailer INDITEX (IDEXY)operates more than 6,000 stores worldwide. Globetrotters can find its flagship chain, Zara, in almost every major city in the world. The core market for Inditex is Europe, which accounts for two-thirds of sales, but the company (formally called Industria de Diseño Textil) is also expanding into emerging markets. Highly regarded for its expertise in “fast fashion”—the ability to rapidly design, produce and distribute trendy-yet-affordable clothing—Inditex will surely profit as Europe picks up steam.

Raymond James analyst Cedric Lecasble believes the company will outpace the broad European market over the next 12 months. At $33, the ADRs sell for 26 times estimated year ahead earnings. That is in line with Inditex’s biggest competitor, Sweden based Hennes & Mauritz (HNNMY), otherwise known as H&M.

Impressive income. As U.S. investors know, phone companies are go-to stocks for dividends. The same is true in Europe. In particular, the ADRs of DEUTSCHE TELEKOM (DTEGY), the Continent’s largest telecommunication services provider, yield a juicy 5.4%, more than both AT&T (T) and Verizon Communications (VZ).

Deutsche Telekom is a company undergoing change. It has a new CEO, and it has been negotiating to sell its T-Mobile USA subsidiary (it owns 74% of the company). Sale of the unit would probably net the German company about $15 billion before taxes and allow it to focus on its European operations, which currently account for 80% of earnings.

With revenues having climbed 6% in the third quarter of 2013, Deutsche Telekom is showing signs that it is benefiting from Europe’s recovery. The ADRs, at $17, aren’t cheap for a telecom stock, trading for 18 times estimated 2014 profits. But analysts see Deutsche Telekom’s earnings jumping 26% this year, so the above average price-earnings ratio seems defensible. Plus, even if the stock does nothing over the coming year, you’ll collect that handsome dividend

ANJELICA TAN

DURING THE PAST DECADE DRUG PRICES HAVE DOUBLED IN THE COST OF CANCER MEDICATIONS NOW SPARKING A REBELLION AMONG DOCTORS, PATIENTS AND INSURERS

Global spending on cancer drugs rose 28 percent to $91 billion in 2013 from $71 billion in 2008, according to a report by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The average cost of branded cancer drugs in the U.S. has doubled over the past decade. And it’s not just cancer treatments. Dozens of medicines, for ailments including multiple sclerosis, diabetes and high cholesterol, have doubled or more in price from 2007 to early 2014.

Doctors, insurers, patients and politicians are beginning to push back.“This is a moral imperative,” says Clifford Hudis, a former president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “I don’t think any of us want to look back and say we turned away and didn’t lead while this was happening.” Cancer doctors are in the process of creating a way to measure the value of drugs that weighs both effectiveness and cost.

Insurers are making changes that also may put a check on prices by forcing patients to pay a bigger share of expensive medications. Many health-care plans sold through the exchanges established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act require patients to pay a percentage of the total price of high-priced drugs, rather than a fixed dollar co-pay. With costs running into tens of thousands of dollars, patients can pay thousands, limited only by insurance out-of-pocket maximums.

As more employer-based health plans copy this feature, drug makers will be forced to grant steep discounts to keep their products off the list of costly drugs handled in this way, says Richard Evans, an analyst at SSR Health in Montclair, New Jersey. “There is a major inflection point coming on pharmaceutical pricing,” he says.

Fifteen cancer drugs introduced in the past five years cost more than $10,000 a month, according to data from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. And pharmaceutical makers are boosting prices on existing drugs as well.“

We are looking at a drug-pricing bubble,” says Leonard Saltz, chief of the gastrointestinal oncology unit at Sloan Kettering. Saltz in 2012 led a rebellion against an expensive new cancer drug. He refused to put it on the hospital’s formulary, its list of medicines accepted for use. “At what point do we say this is more than society can afford?” he asks.

For now, price increases are helping drug companies make up for steep declines in revenue as some blockbuster drugs come off patent. Drug and biotech stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index returned 8.4 percent this year through June 9 and 45 percent in 2013.

The introduction of a new treatment for hepatitis C, which affects some 3 million people in the U.S., has helped bring the debate to a head. Gilead Sciences Inc. priced Sovaldi at $84,000 for 12 weeks of treatment. Sovaldi in combination with other drugs usually cures the disease, marking a significant advance in treatment, as hepatitis C has been chronic in some patients. The potential to eradicate the virus, which destroys the liver, could make Sovaldi one of the biggest-selling drugs in history.

If everyone with hepatitis C uses the new drug, insurance carriers will face a huge bill, says Sharon Frazee, vice president for research and analysis at Express Scripts Holding Co., a pharmacy benefit manager.

Sovaldi has caught politicians’ attention. In March, Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and two other members of Congress demanded data from Gilead on how it came up with the price. Gilead officials met with Waxman’s staff at the end of that month, and the congressman’s office has asked for additional information.

Sovaldi may reduce total treatment costs because it cures the disease and so doesn’t need to be taken for extended periods, says Gregg Alton, an executive vice president at Gilead. Still, Express Scripts has threatened to stop covering Sovaldi if similarly effective competitors come to market with better prices.

ROBERT LANGRETH

WALL STREET: ANOTHER GOOD YEAR FOR U.S. STOCKS CONTRARIANS SEE RISKS FROM STRETCHED VALUATIONS, INFLATION AND THE FED

Bank strategists agree:   U.S. stocks are going up in 2014, at least a bit. At the beginning of January, after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed out 2013 at 1,848, their end-of-year targets ranged from 1,850 to 2,100. The median among 20 sell-side prognosticators was 1,950, which would be a 5.5 percent gain if it pans out. In other words, after big advances for U.S. stocks in four of the past five years, including a robust 32 percent return for the S&P 500 last year, the forecast is for more.  

What could possibly go wrong? Fortunately, there are always a few money managers and strategists ready to address that question. Their present concerns encompass inflation, Federal Reserve tapering, stock valuations and technical chart breakdowns. 

David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc., says the biggest stock market risk right now is that the Fed will be forced to raise interest rates as the economy grows faster than expected. That flies in the face of current wisdom. While the Fed has begun to withdraw its monetary support for the economy by trimming its bond purchases, most economists say the central bank will keep its benchmark funds rate near zero at least into 2015.  

A market that shrugged off bad news for the past several years may quickly become one underwhelmed by good news, in Rosenberg’s thinking. “One thing that we learned in this cycle is that you can have very weak growth but a tremendous surge in the market when the Fed is providing a tremendous amount of liquidity,” he says. “I’d expect that when we actually get growth, and we get the Fed doing something different, we’re going to get different results in the market.” 

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, describes a scenario that has a lot in common with Rosenberg’s. Inflation, or inflation fears, is a possibility in 2014, Paulsen says. He sees nominal economic growth accelerating to as much as 6 percent with gross domestic product expansion at 3.5 percent plus inflation, measured by the GDP price deflator, up to 2.5 percent.  

The threat of an overheating economy would then raise concern that the Fed will be unable to withdraw its extraordinary monetary support in an orderly fashion, Paulsen says. “The methodical and well-controlled monetary tapering which greets us here at the beginning of the year could turn to a ‘panic taper,’” Paulsen wrote in a Jan. 2 letter to clients. That would wreak havoc in the bond market, and    boost stock market volatility, he says.  

Paulsen forecasts that the S&P 500 will climb as high as 2,000 at some point in 2014, a gain of 9 percent from when he published his note, and then slide, finishing with no gain at all for the year. If that comes to pass, it likely would be a setback and not an end to the bull market, which he says has more years to go.  

Sam Stewart, chairman of Wasatch Advisors Inc. in Salt Lake City, predicts a rapid stock market sell-off at some point in 2014. He argues that stock valuations are stretched after the five-year bull market, especially when rising price-earnings ratios are compared with slowing growth rates the so called PEG ratio. Based on profits and profit growth for the most recent 12 months, the S&P 500’s PEG ratio was    3.1 at the beginning of the year, compared with a 20-year average of 1.1, according to Stewart. That’s higher than it was in 2007, when the market touched its pre-financial-crisis peak, he says. 

price earning ratio
source : yale university

If stocks are expensive, they’re vulnerable to unpleasant surprises, Stewart says. The nationwide steel strike in 1959 and the failure of Long Term Capital Management in 1998 are examples of events that triggered selloffs in overvalued markets, according to Stewart, whose Wasatch World Innovators Fund beat 99 percent of its peers during the past five years.  

For Carter Worth of Oppenheimer & Co., the New York investment bank and wealth manager, the big risk may be simply that total returns for U.S. stocks have been positive for five years running. Worth is his firm’s chief market technician, meaning his forecasts are based on historical charts and patterns, not economic or company fundamentals.  

Since 1927, the S&P 500 has had five consecutive winning years on six previous occasions. The average return in the next year was negative 2.3 percent, according to Worth. And the peak-to trough decline in that sixth year, as opposed to the calendar year move, averaged 23 percent. “At a minimum, 2014 has high odds to be a below-average year,” Worth says, “with the possibility that it’s not only below average but has something quite ugly.”