Everyone knows how difficult it can be during a recession. But not everyone knows what a recession really is. Ronald Reagan said a recession is when your neighbor loses his or her job. A depression is when you lose yours. That’s a good starting point, but let’s dive in a bit deeper. What is a [...]
When you consider any financial transaction, it’s always good to start out with a negative bias. In other words, it’s good to actively look for problems and search for what might go wrong before you sign on the bottom line. I always assume the worst and look for landmines. If I don’t find anything, I [...]
My credit sucks. There’s really no better way to say it but over the last 12 months, I’ve taken strides to improve it. This meant paying all of my bills on time, paying off a lot of student loan debt and settling with a few student loan creditors which had my loans in “collection”. As [...]
Do you almost have enough money to retire and want to scale back from the 40-hours-a-week grind? If so, here’s a way for you to get your employer to agree to your phased retirement. Before you approach your employer, you have to think like her. Her main interest is her business. She wants the best [...]
Lifecycle funds are popular investment options. They are choices in almost every retirement and 529 plan I see these days. And this is to say nothing of the many investors who purchase these funds outside of college and retirement plans. But are lifecycle funds good choices? In most cases, no. In one case, yes. Before I explain [...]
Many of us don’t think about checking our credit records until after we’ve applied for credit — and possibly been denied. Only after we end up with terms we didn’t want or have the application rejected do we think to wonder what in our credit record, might have caused such a negative result. While you [...]
You know that Uncle Sam is expecting your tax payment shortly. And if you want to make that payment by using your credit card, you can actually do so free of charge and avoid IRS trouble. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to scoop up some airline miles for yourself too. Have I [...]
I finally broke down and decided to review YNAB, better known to some as You Need A Budget, the premier personal budget software package. And even though I’m a professional financial advisor and Certified Financial Planner, what you do financially dwarfs the importance of my work. That’s right. Even if you had Warren Buffet working [...]
What is a mutual fund prospectus? It’s a document that gives you an inside look at your mutual fund, and it’s about as inviting to read as a telephone book. That’s exactly the way Wall Street likes it. As long as you don’t take the five minutes it usually requires to go through the document, [...]
If you are interested in taking money out of an IRA penalty-free, there are a number of ways to do this. But first let’s see why it’s so important to stick to the IRA rules. Let’s say you have $3,500 in credit card bills that you want to pay off with IRA funds. If you [...]
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