Feed items
Make an appointment with yourself to manage your money
This is a guest post from J.D. Roth, who founded the blog Get Rich Slowly in 2006. Roth wrote Your Money: The Missing Manual and is the “Your Money” columnist for Entrepreneur magazine. His latest project is a year-long course on how to master your money, which explains how to slash costs and boost income so that you can pursue early retirement and other goals. This article is one piece of this course.
Time to think about taxes, again!
Yes, I know we’re just past last year’s tax season, but good tax planning works only if we start early enough for the current year. Having last year’s tax return still fresh in memory gives us a great start for next year’s tax planning.
Understand how your income is being taxed
Do you know what your effective tax rate is? Do you have more than one income source? Do you know how each of your income sources is taxed? Income can be broadly classified as:
5 Vehicles With the Longest Lifespans
This post comes from Anna Williams at our partner site LearnVest.com.
There are dozens of factors to consider when it comes to buying a new car—everything from safety features to the length of the loan.
But if durability is high on your lists of musts, a new study might help steer you in the right direction.
Automobile website ISeeCars.com sifted through 30 million used car listings over nearly 30 years to pinpoint which models were most likely to have at least 200,000 miles clocked in—and still be on the road.
How your life is changing in a Heartbleed
No, that’s not a typo. If you haven’t heard of “Heartbleed” yet, listen up.
Events that radically change our lives don’t come along that often. The 9/11 attacks changed not only how we travel, but how we think and act when we go out. Having your belongings searched when you go out to a ballgame was unthinkable before; now it’s routine.
Heartbleed is such an event, and over the next few years it will change how all of us do business.
What is Heartbleed?
It’s a security breach, but not just any security breach. Think of the infamous Target breach as a little rowboat and Heartbleed as the Queen Mary. Some have called it the biggest data security breach in the history of the Internet, and the ripples across the digital landscape have only just begun.
Parents’ attitudes toward money and kids
As parents, we pick up a fair amount of information from other parents. There’s some good advice, some bad advice, and then there are opinion surveys.
Even though I tend to second-guess the way some of the questions are phrased, I like opinion surveys because they are a window into what large numbers of other people are thinking. Even if the view through that window isn’t perfect, we can get enough insight to question certain issues and think them through from a new perspective.
10 Questions for … a Business Coach
This post comes from Jessica Henderson at our partner site LearnVest.
Never miss a new episode of Shark Tank? Invented a revolutionary evaporating kitty litter that you’re itching to debut to the world?
You’re not alone.
Every month, some 543,000 new businesses are launched—but the hard truth is that only seven out of 10 survive the crucial first two years to stay in the game.
To help you get your own big idea off the ground with your expectations in check, we asked Trisha D. Scudder, founder and principal of Executive Coaching Group, Inc.—a pioneer in the field, with over 25 years of experience—to outline the unexpected sacrifices, the rookie mistakes, and yes, the perks of being the big kahuna during the tricky early years of owning your own business.
Worst-case-scenario playbook
This is the time of year when I annually confer with my financial adviser. As I drove to meet him in his office a couple weeks ago, I had reason to expect we’d both be in jovial moods. The stock market’s performance over the past year has been stellar, after all, and my account has tallied corresponding gains.
But as we talked, I was quickly reacquainted with reality. His role is not to be jovial or complacent. A big part of his role, as far as I can discern, is to remind me to stay on the straight and narrow with my financial goals. So after noting I’ve done a good job accumulating a nest egg, he figuratively splashed ice water in my face. “Consider what would happen if you had to retire today on what you’ve got,” he noted with admirable sternness. “You wouldn’t be living very lavishly.”
How to rear money-smart kids
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated, in 2013, that outstanding student loans have swelled to over $1.2 trillion. Seven in ten college seniors who graduated in 2012 had student loan debt, at an average of $29,400. Scary! It is extremely important for kids to have a good handle on personal finance before they enter college. Personal finance is now becoming a part of the K-12 curriculum in many school districts, but the best education can only come from parents and habits developed at home. So how can we raise money smart kids?
How do you teach your kids about money?
Smartphone apps to help you avoid traffic
This article comes from Nate Segall from the Quicken Loans Zing! blog.
Traffic – we despise it, we can’t stand it and we’ll do anything to avoid it. You can catch the morning news before you head out to work, tune in to the traffic updates on the radio – or you can download a traffic application on your smartphone. These apps are here to help you elude bumper-to-bumper driving, accidents and any other annoying traffic hazards. Some of these apps may be better than the rest, but each app has its own advantages, so it’s worth trying them out to see which one you like best. Below are a few of the best apps out there to help you evade that pesky traffic.
WAZE
Tax refunds: Why following the crowd makes sense
A few weeks ago, someone pulled out a gun and shot four people in a Detroit tax preparer’s office over a late income tax refund. Though such outrageous reactions are rare, thankfully, there is a surprisingly emotional division among people on the issue of whether it is best to aim (no pun intended) for a tax refund or not:
- The “Yes” camp believe it is best to shoot for a refund
- The “No” camp don’t even think about it
Which camp do you think is bigger? The answer might surprise you. In 2011 (the latest available — I know, the IRS isn’t too fast when it comes to updating their stats), a full 78 percent of all individual tax returns received a refund. Clearly the “yes camp” is the greater. The average refund? $2,872.
Facebook
Become a fan
Twitter
Follow us
RSS
Subscribe