This Personal Finance 101 article focuses on upping your knowledge on all of the various retirement accounts that are available to people living in the US and Canada. If you are anything like me, you want to make sure that the next time a retirement account alphabet soup conversation starts up, you can jump right… Read More
Who couldn’t use some extra money, right? Maybe you have some unexpected expenses coming up and your zero-based budget can’t accommodate it. Or perhaps there is someone in your life that could use a few extra bucks and you want to help. Chances are you’re sitting on a gold mine of unwanted things right in… Read More
If you think of life insurance as a useless postmortem payday, consider these “pro” arguments. On the short list of things we don’t talk about in polite company, death and money rank pretty high. Perhaps that’s why life insurance, which involves both, doesn’t typically make for lively cocktail-party banter. If you’re among the 60 percent… Read More
I’m a huge advocate of envelope budgeting. It’s a time-tested method at making sure you don’t spend more than you have. But envelope budgeting is more than that; it’s also a practical and philosophical money management strategy. It forces you to look at the money you have right now and decide how you should spend it,… Read More
Exactly what is inflation? It’s a word we hear often and usually in a negative economical context. Simply put, inflation is an increase in the cost of goods and services. While no one likes to pay more for something, a low inflation rate (about 2%) is generally a sign of a healthy economy. While it’s… Read More
Paying your bills on time isn’t always enough to keep a high rating. Watch out for these hidden pitfalls. You don’t need to be an MBA to know the best ways to damage your credit rating. It’s actually rather easy: Just fail to pay your bills on time (or, better yet, don’t pay them at… Read More
How can a different mindset actually make me smarter financially? By observation. Yes, that’s right, it’s that simple. By observing your mindset, you create the potential for change. Maybe you’ve heard this before in Quantum Theory. If you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: electrons behave differently when they are observed (Observation Affects Reality)!… Read More
They’re doing okay, but they still face big challenges. Here are 6 tips for talking to your kids about saving! Fact: Kids today have inherited a very different world than the one their parents grew up in—whether we came of age in the 1960s, ’70s or ’80s. Fact: Despite their progressive social attitudes, Millennials (generally… Read More
Whether you’re saving for retirement, a wedding or even just a holiday, saving can be difficult. Half the time we’re fighting with the temptation to spend our hard earned cash on new clothes, tech or going out, and the other half the time we’re spending money fixing things that have gone wrong; the car, the… Read More
I’m going to get this right out in the the open. Debt is bad. Now I know some of you are already thinking, “yeah, but what about my home equity line of credit, that isn’t so bad. I took that out to make a home improvement which is contributing to the overall value of my… Read More