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This is a guest post by Jon. Though these financial tips will work for just about anyone, this is a special message for all the college students out there.
I know, that title sounds quite ominous doesn’t it? Well, that was the point! If you’re about to start college, you need to perform a reality check. Where do you stand with your finances? Have you even thought about creating a cash cushion? Chances are you probably haven’t.
And don’t assume that you’ll learn personal finance and money management skills in college. Here’s another reality check: college professors could care less about your financial success. College is about knowledge and learning, not about practical skills that have a huge impact on your day to day life. Don’t rely on others to teach you how to budget or save money. Start now before it’s too late.
So, if no one is going to help you learn about personal finance, who will? The answer is YOU and only YOU. Every ounce of responsibility falls on your shoulders now. Mom and Dad are no longer around to hold your hand through life. It’s “go time” and the race is on.
Now that you understand the severity of the situation, I’m going to share with you some tips that will help you on this quest for financial knowledge. [ continue reading… ]
Not too long ago, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said that he expects a policy of low interest rates to persist. As a result, it looks like savers won’t get a break for a while. Making the most of your cash continues to be difficult with even high yield savings accounts offering a yield of right around 1%.
If you are concerned about making the most of your cash in 2012, you will have some limited options — and you may have to get creative.
Rewards Checking
Yes, there are still financial institutions offering interest bearing checking accounts. However, you will normally have to fulfill certain requirements, such as a minimum balance and/or a minimum number of debit card transactions. However, if you move your emergency fund or other long-term savings account to one of these accounts, you might be able to find an account with a rate above 2%. That beats just about any high yield savings account, and comes close to beating many 5-year CD rates. [ continue reading… ]
December is sure to pass by in a blur and before we know it, we’ll be ringing in the new year. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has a monster list of things I should do before the new year to help with my finances for next year. Here are some of the things I hope to get done before 11:59 pm of December 31st. [ continue reading… ]
In my old job, we always had to readjust inventory levels constantly, and it was frustrating because we had to change the same levels numerous times to meet customer requests and demand changes. They never seemed to justify the small amounts that we were able to save when we could just as well stock a few more units than what the system showed we need, saving precious human resources for the company.
Many people are the same with their finances, spending a ton of personal time trying to save that extra dime. These include looking at websites for personal finance articles, checking stock prices every 5 minutes, writing budget reports, graphing net worth charts etc. If they were to list out everything that they do to try to save money, it could be called “madness”.
Is the time spent justified? Some of us might be spending 2 hours or more a day on something like this. Say we are able save $8 each and every day, which might sound great since many of us know that $8 a day is probably going to be worth tons of money with compound interest. But then why can’t we just find a part time job that pays more than $4 per hour? Is the extra work still worth the effort?
I asked myself this very same question, and my response came out to be something like this: [ continue reading… ]
My youngest is one of kind. Actually, he’s nearly a carbon copy of his dad, but according to the teachers and specialists he’s met with, he’s definitely unique. He learns differently than the average youngster and his only definitive traits are that he is consistently inconsistent. They haven’t been able to pigeonhole him yet. He has some traits of dyslexia, some trait of dysgraphia, a speech delay (but advanced vocabulary) and small motor control problems. He can change the oil in any truck, tractor, or ATV we own, and often helps his dad troubleshoot mechanical problems in the equipment barn. He carries on intelligent conversations with adults, gets along well with his peers, and prefers to be outdoors at the crack of dawn – working. Last week after a rough day doing creative writing, he announced he was quitting school and getting a job fixing cars. Did I mention he’s seven years old? Yeah, he’s unique all right.
Because he doesn’t fit into any existing patterns for learning disabilities, we’ve resorted to creating a hodgepodge of adaptations to deal with issues as they arise in the classroom. And since he doesn’t fit the traditional diagnoses for typical learning disorders, we’ve had to pay for much of his treatment out of pocket, unless we wanted to wait until he failed a grade at which time the state would step in and fund a more robust and aggressive set of learning interventions. We decided we weren’t willing to sacrifice a year of his education and worked his treatment into the family budget.
He’s now in second grade, and has straight A’s. He works four times as hard as the average student and sometimes takes days to complete a seemingly simple assignment. But we’ve found a combination that works for him, and what we’ve learned from our struggles may help some parents out there who are feeling overwhelmed and perhaps don’t have room in the budget for specialized treatment. Here’s what we learned. [ continue reading… ]
Time flies, so it is always a good time to evaluate goals and get your financial house in order. Unfortunately, all too often we wait for someone to rescue us from our bad decisions and poor judgment. However, I have a news flash: if your hero hasn’t come yet, then perhaps it’s time to take a radical step yourself. Here are three reasons you should become your own financial hero.
Being Your Own Financial Hero Allows You to Hold the Keys to Your Own Financial Destiny You have more power than you may think. A few years ago, I made a casual observation about the striking resourcefulness and wisdom of one celebrity. As a reality-star and daughter to the late Aaron Spelling, Tori Spelling seemed to have a very charmed life. You might not know that she experienced financial challenges. However, she received a tiny fraction of her late father’s $500 million estate. That meant that she had to chart her own course, which might have been a blessing in disguise. Fast forward a few years, and she is a serious entrepreneur in her own right. She designs and markets her own line(s) of jewelry on the Home Shopping Network, ran the country Chateau La Rue Inn, owns a production company, penned a New York Times bestseller sTORI Telling, and has starred in her own realities shows, etc. [ continue reading… ]
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