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The Rise of Black Box Car Insurance
Devices that track driving behavior can help lower your premiums — and keep tabs on teens. Photo: State Farm
Car insurance companies have always looked for ways to maximize profits by minimizing their risk. Insurance companies make money by taking in more in premiums than they pay out in claims. It’s hard to raise premiums in a competitive market, so reducing risk is the easiest way for them to become more profitable.
Making money would be a lot easier for insurance companies if they weren’t in competition with one another. All they would need to do is tally up how much they expect to pay out in claims based on their own history, add in a profit margin, divide it all by their number of policyholders, and voila: The insurance company makes a tidy profit.
Chase Slate® Review
Chase Slate® is the best card around to help you pay off credit card debt as quickly as possible, then keep your balance hovering at or near zero with an array of helpful budgeting and payment tools.
With Chase Slate®, you’ll receive an introductory balance transfer offer with no balance transfer fee for the first 60 days. You’ll also get the unbeatable introductory rate of 0% APR on all purchases and said balance transfers for the first 15 months. These introductory offers from Chase Slate are ideal if you’ve been struggling to pay off your credit card balance because of high interest rates.
Keeping Lifestyle Inflation at Bay
One of the biggest challenges that people face when it comes to personal finance success is lifestyle inflation. It’s a subtle thing that people often just take on without even really noticing or thinking about it, but then it turns out to be a vicious enemy of their financial goals.
What Is Lifestyle Inflation?
Lifestyle inflation simply refers to an increase in spending in response to an increase in income. Whenever a person starts bringing home more money and then, because of that increased income, they start spending more by buying a nicer car, buying more gadgets, and so on, they’re undergoing lifestyle inflation.
Student Loans 101: Vocabulary
Money and college can be confusing. Whether you’re just starting out on your college journey or dealing with student loans from years ago, here is a glossary of helpful terms you may need to know:
Accredited: If your college and program is accredited, it means that it has met specific requirements by the U.S. Department of Education. You’ll have to attend an accredited school to get federal loans or use any federal aid.
Administrative Wage Garnishment: If your federal student loans go into default, the federal government has the ability to take up to 15% of your disposable income directly from your employer.
APR/Annual Percentage Rate: This percentage is the interest rate you will pay on your loan.
Questions about Baby Exhaustion, Data Plans, Goodwill, Costco, and More!
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Money discipline with baby exhaustion
2. Never enough
3. Piles of old paperbacks
4. Books for high earners
5. Investing small amounts
6. The $2,000 iPad
7. Buy it for life: Goodwill
8. Comparing quality of life
9. “Costco-sized portions”
Saving Money in Your Startup — Part 2
So you’re thinking about starting a business. Congrats! Now what? Odds are good that if you’re starting a business, you’re a “solopreneur” — meaning it’s just you, and you’ve got some questions about what to do next.
Whether it’s your first startup or you’ve been down this path before, identifying and accessing key resources — both online and offline — will save you money when you launch your business. Today’s post will explore money-saving tools, software, and practices to help you launch your startup in a cost-efficient manner. Ultimately you will have to assess your own business and financial resources to decide what is best for your situation.
So how do you set up a business correctly and get the wheels turning with limited capital and resources?
Best Home Warranty Company for 2014
If you’re considering a home warranty to help protect you from costly home repairs, there are several companies that want your business. Unlike the big insurance companies that provide home, life, and auto policies, home warranty companies aren’t household names. For that reason, you may feel like you’re starting from square one in your search.
The good news: I’ve done a lot of the legwork for you. After analyzing several of the top home warranty companies, three stand out as the best:
Insurance Ads: Trick or Treat?
Insurance isn’t a product you can see or touch, so insurers sell memorable characters — such as Allstate’s ‘Mayhem.’
Remember that ad…? Of course you do, because even when you think advertising isn’t having an effect on you, it is. The fact that you remember the Taco Bell Chihuahua or the Old Spice guy is proof that television ads, at the very least, take up some space in your memory. Making a brand or product memorable by associating it with a character such as The Most Interesting Man in the World is only one of a commercial’s goals, but it doesn’t end with brand awareness.
Nine Strategies for Cultivating a Mindset of Financial Independence
As I’ve stated many times, Sarah and I have a central goal of financial independence at the earliest possible age. Financial independence, to us, means that the requirement of money in exchange for our work becomes entirely optional, leaving us to choose options for our work based entirely on our own skills and personal joy. Considering our twenties were disastrous from a financial standpoint, we’re aiming to be able to achieve this goal in our mid-forties or so – a decade down the road, if all goes well.
The biggest challenge of adopting such an enormous goal is that the only way to actually achieve it is to change your mindset. That enormous goal needs to underline how you look at the world and the decisions you make.
Best Free Credit Report Site of 2014
Credit is a very important part of your adult life, yet it’s often neglected by any school curriculum while you’re learning the ins and outs of life.
Every U.S. citizen who needs to be extended a line of credit, obtain a job, have a cell phone, and/or rent a dwelling needs to stay on top of their credit. Luckily, there are a lot of different tools out there to obtain free credit reports. You can either sign up for a free trial from a more comprehensive site or sign up with one of the free credit-report sites that don’t always offer full reports but do typically provide many helpful credit tools.
The Simple Dollar’s Top Picks
Here are the top two free-trial credit report sites:
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