It may be a good time to get Sirius about boosting portfolio

Petite cars? Two wheels? If you’re rolling down the street, you’re in Sirius XM Radio’s (Nasdaq: SIRI) crosshairs.

The satellite radio giant has struck deals with MINI USA and BMW Motorcycles to offer its satellite receivers as standard equipment beginning with 2011 vehicles. The radios will come with a free year of Sirius Everything. If past patterns hold up, roughly half of those installations will convert into self-paying customers after the trial is up.

Sirius XM has grown its subscriber base in each of the past five quarters, topping the 20-million mark recently. When the bottom fell out of the new-car market, Sirius XM felt the pain alongside automakers. Now that car sales have picked up, there’s little reason to expect subscriber accounts to decline the way they did during the first half of 2009.

Are we closing in on market saturation? No. Paying for radio may never be appealing outside of active drivers, but there’s still a big enough market there to tap. One also has to consider that Howard Stern’s new five-year deal includes mobile streaming. Sirius XM has rolled out smartphone apps, and there is no excuse if mobile streaming doesn’t take off for Sirius XM – except perhaps the stiff price.

Sirius XM has cleaned up nicely, and now – like soon-to-be subscribers on BMW motorbikes – it’s an easy rider.

Ask the Fool

Q: Should I rent, and not buy, a house, if I plan to move within a few years? – P.G., Pueblo, Colo.

A: In general, yes. If you buy a house and then sell it soon, you may not recoup the buying and selling costs, which can total more than 6 percent of a home’s value.

In the first years of a traditional mortgage, your payments go mainly toward interest, not toward paying off the principal. After living in the house for only a few years, you’ll still owe the majority of the loan. (Plus, you’ll have paid for repairs, property taxes, etc.)

Renting is always worth considering. It’s true that mortgage interest is tax-deductible, but if you’re renting a place for considerably less than you’d have to cough up in mortgage payments, you might invest the difference and build a little nest egg. If you expect prices to fall or stagnate in the coming years, renting would be especially prudent.

Learn more in our Home & Real Estate nook at www.fool.com/how-to-invest. And access a rent-or-buy calculator at http://realestate.yahoo.com/calculators.

Q: If I sell a stock for a loss in my IRA account, can I deduct the loss on my tax return? – B.Y., Lawrence, Kan.

A: Sorry. You typically deposit pre-tax money into a traditional IRA. Eventually, you’ll be taxed on your entire withdrawals from it, regardless of any gains or losses. (Of course, if you make non-deductible contributions to your traditional IRA, they won’t be taxed when you take them in the form of distributions.)

With Roth IRAs, you invest post-tax money, and eventually withdraw it all tax-free. But you don’t claim losses (or pay taxes on gains) in the interim.

My dumbest investment

When I was a young man, in the early 1950s, I scrounged up $300 and bought 100 shares of the Frank Fehr Brewing Co., which was releasing a new beer called Fehr’s Liquid Gold. All my friends were interested in it because it was supposed to leave no beer breath. (We were all cursed with mothers who could smell beer on our breath before we reached the front porch.)

Unfortunately, it failed the mother test. Bankruptcy followed, and I lost my $300. – James S., online

The Fool responds: The beer apparently sold well at first, but it ate into sales of the company’s other beers. The lesson here is that it’s not enough for a company to have an exciting product. It needs to work well and be successfully marketed to and embraced by consumers. Even then, if a company has unmanageable debt or is burning through cash too quickly, it can stumble or fail.

Sometimes competitors are able to copy a company’s product, too. Examine any potential investment from lots of angles, and ask yourself what could go wrong.