Money Tips Network

If there’s one thing that’s certain about 2019, it’s that the year ahead will be filled with a great deal of uncertainty — at least on the economic front.

Trend experts and personal finance experts alike say the country’s current, polarized political climate, including the record-breaking government shutdown, has a lot to do with that, and is setting the stage for a year that no one can truly predict.

“At the moment, we are living in this world of unparalleled polarization,” said trend expert Daniel Levine, director of the trends consultancy firm the Avant-Guide Institute.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Unknown banks
2. Roth conversion with low income
3. Bone broth and stock?
4. TaxAct basic version question
5. Credit card with bad credit
6. Dollar cost averaging
7. Abject poverty?
8. When to buy a book?
9. “Getting through” a cold

“It manifests itself in the shape of the lucky fool, defined as a person who benefited from a disproportionate share of luck but attributes his success to some other, generally very precise, reason.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness

I think we’ve all met some version of the “lucky fool” at some point in our lives.

Think of a person born wealthy, with their parents giving them every academic and professional advantage, and then believing that they acquired some small measure of success in life through sheer talent and hard work.

Think of a person who happened to be in the right place at the right time and now believes themselves to be a person of immense skill and value.

Think of the business owner who is immensely proud of their keen business sense and strategies when their success lies on the back of a handful of talented and hard working folks.

Over the last few years, I’ve really begun to appreciate a cup of coffee in the morning, particularly on days when I need to tackle a lot of tasks that require focus and ideas. My personal preference is cold, black coffee, cold brewed in the refrigerator and consumed without sweeteners or cream (I’m actually sipping a cup of this as I write this article), but everyone has their own particular way that they like their coffee. Sarah, for example, likes hers quite hot with a bit of cream in it.

Of course, a morning coffee routine can be quite expensive. I used to drink coffee pretty regularly back in the day, but I did it by stopping at a local coffee shop on my way to work and dropping $6 or $7.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a problem solver of some kind, and the problem you identified was likely related to your personal finances. Finding a solution to that problem led you, in some fashion, to The Simple Dollar – maybe it was a Google search or a link from a friend or something else.

Financial problems come to us in various shapes and sizes and they appear in a number of different ways. Maybe you lost your job and are really struggling to make ends meet. Maybe you’re just treading water financially and your debts aren’t really going away. Maybe you’re in good financial shape but you’d like to prepare yourself financially for a career change because you’re unhappy with some aspects of your career. All of these approaches have a central theme in common: We all want to improve our lives.

Join our Tweetchat Thursday, 1/17 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific/ 3p.m. Eastern for lively conversation and a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card or one of two $50 Amazon gift cards! Use #WBChat and #SaverLife to participate.

This week's topic: Tax Refunds!

Have you decided that 2019 will be your year of decluttering, minimizing, and consuming less? If so, you’re not the only one. As Becoming Minimalist founder Joshua Becker discovered, the topic is on a lot of people’s minds.

Becker’s new book, The Minimalist Home, was released on Dec. 18. Within an hour, Amazon was sold out. By that evening, Walmart, Target, and other smaller online booksellers had run out of copies, too.

A few days after the publication date, Becker wrote to his newsletter subscribers that his publisher had misjudged the popularity of the title — it sold more copies in the first week than his previous book, The More of Less, had in two-plus years.

While it’s hard to measure just how many New Year’s resolutions fail, some studies peg the figure as high as 80%. It’s easy to get pumped up about a new goal for a while, but it’s much harder to change your behavior for the long-term. That’s why gyms are packed in January and February but empty out later in the year, and it’s also why so many people start diets on January 1 only to fall back into bad habits by early spring.

On the financial side of things, it’s just as easy to start the year with big financial goals but to let life’s twists and turns knock you off track. No matter how much you want to save money or improve your finances, sticking with anything for a year or longer is, well, just plain hard.

My colleagues, who are money nerds just like me, know that I'm obsessed with finding the best retirement calculator. I've been on this quest for years. As you'll learn later this week, my favorite retirement tool is (and has been) NewRetirement. But there are other great tools out there.

“You really need to try OnTrajectory,” Jillian from Montana Money Adventures told me last summer. “It's great.” She's been telling me that over and over ever since. (Meanwhile, Gwen from Fiery Millennials has also been pressuring me to try OnTrajectory.)