Category: Personal Finance

Learn about a variety of personal finance topics, including budgeting, saving, credit, debt, taxes, insurance, retirement and more

Budgeting, Food

Your Grocery Budget: How to Make It and Stick to It

Do you have a grocery budget that’s working for you? To me, it’s super basic, but to so many, making any kind of budget is like speaking a foreign language. Setting a budget goal for food will help you save money, period.

Whether you're making a grocery budget for the first time, or simply trying to save more, these tips will help you reach your goals.

Without a budget or a plan, your spending habits and your control over your money are doomed to fail. And it doesn’t matter how much money you may have, it still happens. But I can help you find your budget and stick to it.

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Debt, Family & Relationships

Will Relationship Debt Destroy You as a Couple?

I was just discussing with my wife how these days we have planning resources for just about everything in life. We have health plans, retirement plans, wedding planners, and estate planning. You can plan a vacation with experts and plan where to go to college with sage advice when you need it. But despite the fact that we have marriage counseling and credit counseling available, they always come after the problems arise. And for unmarried couples, well, it may not even exist. “Couple planning” is left to the couples themselves and it can be a huge task to get it right. If there’s relationship debt, it gets even more complicated.

Relationship debt puts a serious strain on married and cohabiting couples. Here's how couples can plan to avoid big debt.

Debt can quickly and easily become a source of contention between a couple. That’s why it’s important to deal with relationship debt proactively, before it becomes a destructive force.

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Retirement

Why Most Americans Do Not Prepare For Retirement

I just finished watching some really depressing information on CNBC today, information that I know is true, but still shocks the senses out of me when I hear and see it in detail. Americans do not prepare for retirement!

Have you done what you need to in order to prepare for retirement? Most Americans haven't prepared properly. Here's why and what can be done.

How it is possible that smart people like us (well supposedly smart, that is) just don’t take as much time looking at retirement as they do deciding what to order for dinner from Grubhub? That may be a small exaggeration, but you get my point. We tend to worry about retirement tomorrow a la Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind”. So, why are Americans so unprepared for retirement?

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Taxes

Cheating on Your Taxes: Why It’s a Bad Idea

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It’s income tax season and I don’t have to remind most of you that it is. But for some of you, it may never actually be “tax season” because you’re cheating on your taxes. If that sounds weird to you, take a minute to think about it.

Cheating on your taxes may be tempting, but it's a bad idea. If you're self-employed, it's easier to do, but you're also more likely to get caught.

Paying taxes are one of our least favorite things to do and our usual goal is to minimize and even avoid paying them in every possible way we can. In fact, I’m going to say this right now, if you thought you could get away with it, you’d probably not pay a penny in income taxes at all! But if that even crosses your mind for a second, let me give you some sage advice: Don’t ever cheat on your income taxes!

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Retirement

When You’re Playing Catch Up: Rules for Retirement Planning in Your 40s

So you’re now a forty-something. It kind of sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? Yesterday you were more concerned with what you’ll be doing on Saturday night and who you’d be doing it with, and today there’s the spouse, the kids, the bills, and all of the other stuff that being a grown-up entails. Yes, it sneaks up on you in a hurry and suddenly you’re worried about retirement planning in your 40s. Am I kidding?

If you're a 40-something and haven't saved much for retirement yet, it's time to focus. Retirement planning in your 40s isn't easy, but it can be done.

Believe it or not, the answer to that question is a resounding no, it’s no joke! That planning of your grown-up life after you stop working has to be done and focused on retirement now, if not even sooner than age forty. The sooner, the better!

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Income & Career

Will You Ever Find a Job That You Love?

Here’s a topic that I feel that I am totally qualified to talk and advise you about: job satisfaction. Strangely though, it’s not because I am living proof that if you try hard enough, you can and will find that “dream job” that you really, really want. Rather, like most of the people you see around you who work in a job that they seem to be trapped in, I was one of those people for about 98.7% of my working career and you are probably one of them right now too. But wouldn’t be great to find a job that you love, that you really, really love?

I've had many jobs over my career, and to find a job that you love isn't always easy. Follow my must-do behaviors to find your best match.

The Work in the Process of Actually Finding “Work”

I guess they call it “work” because let’s face it, it usually isn’t fun, is it? But the process of actually looking for and finding a job is usually far from fun even if the job actually might be fun. I had more jobs then I’d care to relate to you in my career, but it doesn’t always have to go like that.

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Personal Finance

Understanding Our Expanding National Debt and Its Effects

The national debt is something you hear about if you watch any of the endless news programs these days. Its growth has been a significant subject of controversy in U.S. domestic policy for a long time and the issue has become a huge “elephant in the room” that no one seems to have a resolution for.

Most of us could use a little help in understanding the national debt and how it affects us. Here are some of the details to make sense of it.

Given the amount of fiscal stimulus money that has been pumped into the U.S. economy over the past year and the new stimulus monies that will again be added in very soon, it is easy to understand why many people are worrying and paying even closer attention to this issue. So have you asked yourself the question:

How does the national debt affect you?

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Income & Career

What Is Deferred Compensation and the Legend of Bobby Bonilla

Getting good compensation for our time and energy is the reason why we get up every day, go to work, and try to pay all of our bills. For me and for the vast majority of us, it’s an endless challenge to get a good paying job (one we actually like) and then to be paid or compensated fairly for what we do and have it be enough to cover the wants and needs of life! To put it simply, it’s a struggle, but what choice do we really have but to do it? Unless your name is Rockefeller or Donald Trump Jr., not much. So we may know about compensation, but what about deferred compensation?

Deferred compensation can potentially benefit both the employer and employee, but there can be drawbacks as well. Here are some of the pros and cons.

Compensation vs. Deferred Compensation

We understand what compensation is pretty clearly. It can be money, but it can be anything that is valuable and sometimes actually is just that. Vacations, cars, you name it. Now you and I may never see such things as part of our compensation, but some folks see them routinely. Hollywood and entertainment types get that kind of compensation in their contracts for employment and it is possible you may someday get a form of it as well. If you are good…and lucky, that is.

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