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Good Financial Planning Includes Protecting Your Valuables
It’s stressful enough when fire, theft, or severe weather takes away a family’s belongings. But that scenario gets considerably worse if the family was under-insured or their lost items included critical family documents and records. That’s why it’s important to take steps now to protect your valuables and cushion yourselves from some of the financial repercussions that come with life’s disasters. Want to make sure that your... -
Cash VS Credit: The Pros and Cons
Cash VS Credit: The Pros and Cons It’s hard to talk about personal finance without talking about credit cards – specifically, the problems that can accompany credit card debt. In fact, read enough personal finance blogs and you might start to wonder if it’s best to ditch your credit cards entirely in favor of a “cash-only” lifestyle. If you’ve read my blog for a while, you probably know that... -
Three Essential Steps for a Secure Financial Future
This may sound like something your father would tell you, but there’s truth in the saying, financial security doesn’t happen by accident. Like most things in life, getting to a good place financially takes some planning. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Start by listing your financial goals, and then map out a strategy for achieving them, one at a time. Ultimately, you’ll have to define your own goals,... -
Relationship-Saving Money Talks that Every Couple Should Have
Money: It’s not the easiest or most pleasant topic of discussion — but if you’re in a serious, committed relationship, it’s something you have to talk about. If you and your partner share assets and expenses, it’s important that you’re also working together to protect your financial future and well-being. And talking about money can do more than protect your assets: Maintaining an open dialogue about money... -
Want to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck? Seven Ways to Break the Cycle
Living paycheck to paycheck is the opposite of secure. You never know when an unexpected expense will tap into the money you intended to use for rent, groceries, or bills. You want to save, but no matter how hard you try, there’s never any extra money to save for emergencies, debt repayment, or even that family vacation you’d like to take. Even positive events, like anniversaries or birthday celebrations,... -
Sidestepping Overdraft Fees: Five Ways to Avoid Bank Fees
It’s never a pleasant moment: That realization that your checking account is overdrawn and your account is getting hit with multiple $35 overdraft fees. Ultimately, we’re responsible for our own financial missteps – but we all make mistakes. And if you’ve ever felt the sting of a huge overdraft fee for one small error like an overlooked debit card transaction, you know firsthand just how costly those mistakes... -
Billing Errors: How to Find Them – and How to Dispute Them
Okay, be honest: How often do you really look at your bills? I mean really look at them, as in, go through each bill line by line, scanning for errors and/or charges that don’t seem legit? If you’re like most people out there, the answer to that question is probably somewhere between “not very often” and “never.” Part of me blames technology for this trend. Now, don’t... -
The Do’s and Don’ts of Mobile Banking
If you’re like me, you remember the days when you had to swing by an ATM machine or call your bank’s toll-free 1-800 number to verify your account balance or make sure a check cleared. That seems like a lot of effort, but it was still faster than going to the actual bank or waiting for your monthly statement to arrive in the mail. Times sure have changed, haven’t... -
Five Common Money Scams – and how to Avoid
In a previous post, I wrote about ATM skimming, an increasingly popular technique that some tech-savvy thieves are using to steal sensitive financial information, such as bank account and PIN numbers. But skimming isn’t the only scam that you should watch out for. Want to protect your hard-earned money? Want to make sure that your sensitive personal information stays, well, personal? Check out this list of five common... -
How Peer Pressure Can Wreck Your Finances
When you think “peer pressure,” you probably think of kids: High school students pushing each other to make dumb decisions, or catty junior high cliques making fun of classmates who don’t have the “right” clothing, interests, looks, and so on. The good news is, most of us have matured a bit since high school. As adults, we’re more secure in who we are and what we believe in, and,...