Category: Personal Finance

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

Personal Finance

6 Easy Ways to Save Money Right Now

How many times have you said to yourself, “I just have to find a way to save more money”? Over and over again and again I imagine, but when that happens it’s more often than not that you get started and then suddenly…failure. You just don’t stick with it.

It can seem difficult to save money, but that's because we attempt big changes instead of taking baby steps. Try these six easy ways to save money to start.

Why? We’re a nation of overachievers and when we decide to do something, we want to do it really BIG. While there’s nothing wrong with setting really big goals, when it comes to saving money, drastic big lifestyle changes often backfire. That big goal becomes such a huge pressure cooker that it eventually can explode and all you have afterwards is an even bigger mess than when you first started.

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Family & Relationships, Personal Finance

3 Ways My Mother Influenced My Personal Finances

Researchers will tell you that we are all basically a combination of the beliefs, habits, and opinions of the people we surround ourselves with and spend the most of our time in life with. That starts in your childhood and is the unreal influence that a parent has on a child. Think about it. You probably believed almost everything you believed as a kid because of your parents through at least the first 10 years of your life.

We all are influenced by our parents in many ways. Here are 3 ways my mother influenced personal finances for me and changed the course of my money habits.

Unless you came of age in the ’60s like me, that probably continued right on through adulthood, because everyone knows that my generation was the dawning of “The Age of Aquarius” and was a totally enlightened generation, a totally innovative and newly ordained very special generation with all the answers to all the questions of the ages…not!!! We just thought we were that at the time.

But seriously, when you really think about it, it does seem true that you probably get most of your opinions just because of how your closest influences (like Mom) think and that gets reinforced constantly by them. At least that’s my “uneducated” opinion here.

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Income and Career

9 Ways to Make Extra Money in The Dead of Winter

Not so newsworthy, in case you failed to notice, is that it’s winter out there. I can tell because I find myself watching TV each night wrapped in a blanket and drinking hot tea while the wind blows incessantly outside and my car sits snow covered in the parking lot of my condo complex. Nothing gets by me.

If you're looking to learn how to earn money in the winter, here are 9 ideas to get you started. Take advantage of the season to make some extra cash!

So it’s winter and it will stay that way for a good while whether I like it or not, despite the fact that South Florida calls my name almost every day and says, “Garrrry, oh Garrrry, its 83 degrees today.”

I’m not heading to Florida, but instead I am using my time to do what you may think is “the impossible”! I’m figuring out new ways that I can earn some extra money so that maybe, just maybe, next winter I can actually go to Florida and sit in the sunshine (or is that “Sing in the Sunshine”…I tend to get that confused).

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Retirement, Saving & Investing

Your IRA RMD – What You Need to Know About Required Minimum Distributions

You may not have given it that much thought while you were socking away your retirement contributions over the years, but in every life, some rain must fall! The rain in your IRA may be that “special” time when you must start withdrawing funds from it. Many retirees taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) from their traditional IRAs may not know all of the ins and outs of exactly the right way to do it and avoid any penalties along the way if they don’t!

You need to make sure you know all the facts about your IRA RMD (required minimum distribution) so that you avoid penalties. Check out all the details here.

Making IRA RMDs: the What, When, and How

When you reach age 70½—and that’s about 3.5 million Americans right now—you need to know the ins and outs of required minimum distributions (RMDs). If your parents or grandparents are the ones moving into RMD-land, do them a favor and give them some really good advice and information about this subject ASAP.

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Income and Career

How to Run Your Business and How Not to

Having done just about everything one can do in the business world myself, from working as a trainee to managing a huge chain of retail stores and ultimately running my own business, I think I can, with some expertise, tell you that there are ways to do it successfully and there are ways not to be successful. A word of really good advice on how to run your business: do the former and avoid the latter!

Some businesses fail because of market changes, but many fail because they're not doing things right. Here's a few tips on how to run your business.

Why do I mention it today? Well, for quite some time now, I have been observing the demise of some of the greatest American business institutions and thinking to myself “why did that happen?” Every time it does, from Blockbuster Video to Radio Shack and from Lehman Brothers to the now-on-life-support Sears and Kmart stores, I think about what might have been done differently to help avoid that disaster.

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Income and Career

Earn Extra to Boost Your Income: Be a Census Taker

As you probably know, every ten years the federal government conducts a census of the U.S. population to get a count of how many people live in each state. The results of the census help to determine each state’s congressional representation and how much federal money each community receives. Additionally, it provides a better understanding of American demographics. So, yeah, it’s a pretty big deal.

If you're looking for some extra income, consider becoming a census taker. Read on for all the details, including how to apply for the 2020 U.S. Census.

The next census is scheduled for 2020 and will require hiring thousands of census takers to complete the assignment. I’m always trying to recommend and steer people into new ways to earn some extra money and in the case of the census, you can earn a pretty decent stash for a pretty decent period of time, too. If you happen to be available to work flexible hours and want to get in on this, here’s all the things you’ll need to know.

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Debt, Personal Finance, Saving & Investing

2019 Financial Resolutions You Can’t Afford to Blow

You know that you mean well. You always do, don’t you, when it comes to making new year’s resolutions. That diet you were gonna do to lose some weight, the smoking thing that you were definitely going to knock out last year for sure, and oh yeah, the garage that’s full of junk that you have been promising to clean out since 2007, but this is the year, right? You tell yourself every new year things like that and even more.

If your financial resolutions of the past never seem to materialize, perhaps it's time you made some S.M.A.R.T. goals. Here's how to make 2019 successful.

And of course there are those financial resolutions and goals that you seem to always set for yourself to do better with your money, but by the end of March you can’t even recall exactly what your goals were and where you went wrong along the way. Does that sound pretty familiar?

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Personal Finance, Retirement

Your 60’s, 70’s and Beyond – Money in Your Golden Years

It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote a 3-part series entitled “The Middle Ages”. No, not the kind that you studied about in school and have read books and seen some great flicks about. I know you weren’t there, but you do remember it, right? It was the period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the European Renaissance, roughly from the 5th century through the 15th century AD. But now it’s practically 2019!

I've written before about money challenges in your middle aged years, but now it's time to examine your 60's, 70's, and beyond: money in your golden years!

Although times have changed a tad since the Middle Ages, financial needs, dreams, goals, and their importance have not. So that’s why today I thought I would talk to you about another period of your life that requires a great plan and execution. Yet often we just don’t do it the way we should. I’m talking about your 60’s and 70’s and beyond, the golden years that usually spell retirement and big adjustments in life.
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