What sort of information? Take, for example, one of my top Twitter regulars, @mainlinewife. A few weeks ago, she tweeted: “Will one of you young ’uns take #mainlinehusband shopping? He thinks a fleece jacket w/ a corporate logo is proper Sat nite attire.”

Granted, that’s not the sort of information I really need. But it is information I want. It’s the sort of stuff that makes me laugh out loud—and I do that quite often with @mainlinewife’s tweets.

It isn’t much—140 characters. On the other hand, it’s often just enough. Twitter’s immediacy and reach can be intoxicating. On the night of May 2, 2011, a Pakistani man in Abbottabad used Twitter to express his frustration over the helicopter noise keeping him awake. It turns out he was referring to the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Raise your hand if you tweeted—or read tweets—about the presidential election. Just look at that forest of arms. That’s what Twitter is all about.

From Bala Cynwyd to Downingtown, the local Twitter nation is abuzz with restaurant and shopping news, parking tips, fashion and family advice, and much more—all of it arriving so much faster than the trains that once carried Philadelphia’s elite to their Main Line country homes decades ago. And with Superstorm Sandy still a vivid memory, we truly know that Twitter can be much more than a diversion. It’s how power outages are reported, a crucial way to get help to those who need it, and a godsend for family members and friends in times of crisis, no matter how great the distance between them.

It makes perfect sense that a region clamoring for information—whether it’s about the world at large or what’s going on closer to our well-manicured lawns—would be exploding with tweets. I try and read as many of them as I can, every day. I seriously do.

Did you know that CNN’s chief business correspondent, Ali Velshi, lives on the Main Line? He’s also a Twitter enthusiast, who, at the end of his weekly show, Your Money, vows to read every tweet. And everytime Velshi tweets, the amount of people who see it could fill Lincoln Financial Field more than three times over. (I have to plead a bit of Twitter envy here.)

Cynics may contend that Twitter has “trended,” but that doesn’t matter to Paoli’s Melissa Angert, who recently gushed: “The Boden Catalog arrived this week. *Cartwheel* I love Boden. They are stylish, classic, flattering and last forever.”

Following her friends’ lead, Angert began tweeting as @AllThingsChic in 2009. She now does so daily, using it to grow her blog. Her favorite Twitter story, however, revolves around her family. She and her son were stuck in a Jamaican airport when, in desperation, she tweeted @AmericanAir. With Twitter’s help, she made the final flight of the night. Sure beats sleeping on the airport floor.

Anyone who follows me on Twitter (of course you do) knows that it’s an extension of the work I do at NBC 10. It’s such a powerful resource—a way to connect with the public to an even greater degree. I love following Tracey Welson-Rossman (@TWelsonRossman), who encourages young women to fully utilize the power of technology. As chief marketing officer for Chariot Solutions in Fort Washington and founder of TechGirlz.org, Welson-Rossman has had to learn as she goes. Now, she can anticipate the sort of world the next generation of working women will have to negotiate and show them the way.

Guiding people to their next jobs has been a passion of mine since the start of the recession, which is why I follow @cornonthejob. Rich DeMatteo serves “cornheads” from his Wayne office, offering everything from cutting-edge search advice to much-needed pick-me-ups for those struggling: “Dream jobs exist! It’s a matter of making yours come true.” Check out his weekly Twitter chat on Mondays at 10 p.m. “Twitter has been a phenomenal resource,” says DeMatteo.

Ultimately, the tweets I look forward to are the ones that captivate me, make me laugh, make me think, and make me laugh again. Polonius had it right when he told Laertes, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

For the record, that’s 26 characters—still plenty of room to update friends on the latest gossip. Busybody that he was, Polonius would’ve made a great tweeter.

This article was originally published in Main Line Today. 

The post Main Line Today: NBC 10′s Tracy Davidson On Twitter Value appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

For some would-be buyers and refinancers, today’s mortgage rates are the ultimate tease. While ads tout the lowest rates in history (recently under 4% for a 30-year fixed), qualifying for a mortgage that cheap can be an exercise in frustration or futility.

Less-than-perfect credit will hurt, of course, but you may also find yourself struggling if your situation is deemed at all unusual — which could mean anything from owning a business to buying a condo instead of a single-family home. Read on for the best ways to get a deal.

Problem: You’re self-employed.

Solution: Give up deductions.

Business may be booming, but don’t expect the bank to take your word for it. If you haven’t run your own shop for at least two years, you probably can’t get a loan.

Assuming you meet that hurdle, banks will use the average income on your past two tax returns or the most recent, whichever is lower, when determining the amount you can borrow and the rate on your loan.

To read the full story: CNN Money

The post Boost your odds of landing a mortgage appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Some tax breaks are available to just about anybody — regardless of income.

If you’re a high-income type, you’re probably painfully aware that some tax breaks are phased out (either reduced or eliminated) as your adjusted gross income, or AGI, increases. That’s the price of success, right? Well, not necessarily. Believe it or not, some tax breaks are available to just about anybody — regardless of income. Here are six of them.

If you’re self-employed, you may be able to contribute and deduct up to $49,000 for 2011 and up to $50,000 for 2012 by setting up a simplified employee pension, or SEP. Contributing to a SEP could dramatically reduce your taxable income and save you a bundle. Think you’ve already missed the boat for your 2011 taxes? Think again. If you don’t already have a retirement plan in place, you can still set up a SEP and make a deductible contribution to your account for 2011. And that could be done as late as Oct. 15 of this year if you extend your 2011 return for the automatic six-month period.

To read the full story: Yahoo Finance

The post Tax Breaks for All (Even Top Earners) appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Your credit score is like a movie: the image is constantly changing.

Your score, which lenders use to assess your bill-paying ability, is in a constant state of flux and will vary from one credit bureau to the next, meaning you don’t have one credit score, but many.

“Your score can be updated every time there’s a new piece of information,” said Sarah Davies, senior vice president of analytics at VantageScore Solutions LLC. VantageScore is a credit-score model created by the three major credit-reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, which also use the FICO score created by Fair Isaac Co.

Roughly 70% of credit scores change by up to 20 points in a 90-day window, according to VantageScore. Consider your score a reflection of your credit behavior at a particular moment in time.

“You could do something every other day, like pay a bill or miss a payment, and it might change every other day,” she said. “The reality is a lot of those updates are insignificant.”

Your score is mostly determined by how promptly you pay your bills and what kind of debt you carry, though other factors also feed into it. For example, a mortgage holds more weight in the scoring system than a handful of retail accounts, so timely mortgage payments are more important. A car loan, which also carries more heft than a retail card, can be a big help in building a promising credit history.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

The post Why You Should Care About Your Credit Score appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Millions of homeowners have garnered huge savings in recent years from one simple move: refinancing their mortgages. Now, the refinancing craze has spread to an unexpected industry: car loans.

Plunging interest rates have been bad news for savers, but borrowers couldn’t be happier. Mortgage rates have dropped around 3 percentage points from their levels just four years ago. That has translated into hundreds or even thousands of dollars in monthly savings on mortgages.

But the idea of refinancing a car loan never even occurs to many borrowers. After all, with many owners choosing to buy new vehicles even before their loans are paid off, it’s often easier just to take advantage of financing deals from new-car dealers. Moreover, cars typically lose their value so quickly that the loans turn upside down — meaning that the outstanding loan is more than the car is worth, making refinancing a tough proposition.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

The post The Money-Saving Refinancing Move You’ve Never Considered appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

About 37% of business owners are using credit to cover some of their costs, reports the National Small Business Association. The optimal card for your operation depends on how you’ll use it.

Rate should be your primary concern, says Beverly Harzog of Credit.com. APRs on business cards average slightly lower than personal cards (13% vs. 14%), but you can do better with the latter if you have an excellent credit score.

More important, personal card issuers must abide by the CARD Act, which protects you from arbitrary rate hikes.

To read the full story: CNN Money

The post The best credit card for your small business appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Intense customer backlash over new bank fees has led some big financial institutions to backpedal on them in recent months, but at least one is ushering in new charges guaranteed to be unpopular with customers.

Wells Fargo (WFC) stopped offering free checking to new customers in 2010: Now, it’s introducing a $7 monthly charge in six (thus far, unidentified) states for customers who had opened free checking accounts before the cutoff.
The new fees will kick in May 4.

There are ways around the fee. Customers who maintain a minimum daily balance of $1,500 or have direct deposits of $500 or more going into their accounts each month won’t be hit with the $7 fee. If a customer below those thresholds is willing to receive online statements instead of monthly mailings, the $7 monthly charge will be reduced to $5.

The ultimate avoidance mechanism, of course, is to leave your bank if it introduces new fees. However, this is a copycat industry. If a major institution is making money in a new way, you can be sure that rivals will follow.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

The post Is Your Bank Killing Free Checking? appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Starbucks unveiled its own single-cup home-brewing machine Thursday, sending shares of competitor Green Mountain Coffee Roasters reeling in after-hours trading.

Starbucks will begin selling its “Verismo” machine this fall, the company said in a statement, which did not offer pricing information.

Green Mountain currently dominates the single-serve market with its popular Keurig, or K-Cup, machines.

Last year, the two companies announced a deal allowing Green Mountain to produce K-Cup versions of Starbucks coffees and Tazo teas. With the Verismo, however, Starbucks is moving into single-cup brewing for itself, partnering with Germany-based Krueger GmbH & Co. KG to produce the machine.

“The premium single-cup segment is the fastest-growing business within the global coffee industry,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in a statement.

To read the full story: CNN Money

The post Starbucks to sell single-cup home-brew machine appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Given all of the hype ahead of Wednesday’s iPad unveiling, it’s surprising to see how right the leading analysts and tech bloggers were in nailing Apple’s (AAPL) new iPad.

Yes, it will have a speedy quad-core processor. The beefed-up retina display means that there are 3.1 million pixels on the device — or a million more pixels than standard HDTV. The data storage capacities remain the same, and thankfully at the same price points.

This doesn’t mean there weren’t a few surprises out of the Cupertino company. Let’s go over five somewhat unexpected developments.

To read the full story:  Daily Finance

The post 5 Surprises From the New iPad Launch appeared first on Tracy Davidson.

Wells Fargo will roll out a $7 monthly checking account fee to customers in six more states starting in May. Customers who agree to receive online bank statements will pay a $5 fee.

The states are Georgia, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, where Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia branches last year.

Wells Fargo (WFC) stopped offering free checking to new customers in 2010 and began charging a similar fee to existing customers in 23 states at the beginning of 2011. The bank has branches in 39 states.

Customers who meet certain criteria, such as having monthly direct deposits of at least $500 or maintaining a minimum balance of $1,500, will qualify for a fee waiver. The company believes the majority of its customers qualify to avoid the new monthly fee, says spokeswoman Lisa Westermann.

Banks have been experimenting with new charges in response to a regulation that slashed the fees they can charge retailers when consumers use debit cards. Consumers have fought back, though, causing Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others to rescind monthly debit card fees.

To read the full story: USA Today

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