Money Tips Network

How much do you really know about personal finance — or about sending money abroad? This is your chance to test your knowledge against the founder of The Simple Dollar, Trent Hamm. He scored 8/10. Can you do better? If the spirit of competition isn’t enough, five respondents will win a $30 Amazon gift card (chosen at random, regardless of how well you score).

Over the years, I’ve written about my own financial turnaround in bits and pieces, with an article here telling one piece of the story and another article over there telling another piece. Today, I thought I’d lay all of it out in one place, something of a financial and life biography that hopefully I can link back to in later articles for clarification.

So, let’s start from the beginning.

I grew up without a lot of money.

I grew up in rural Illinois, far away from the Chicagoland area, with two really loving parents. I cannot possibly say enough kind things about them.

Many students have spent years planning their post-graduation path. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended not only their senior year, but the entire national economy, and high school seniors are graduating into a world no one was prepared for.

“The bottom line is, the college experience this fall will be very different,” says Robert Farrington, student loan expert at The College Investor. With all of this uncertainty, prospective college students may be re-evaluating their options for continuing their education, including whether to postpone it.

We asked the experts what students should keep in mind when considering the question: Should I take a gap year?

Personal loans provide an excellent avenue for individuals to get access to money when they need it. The first and most important decision you’ll need to make when shopping for a loan is secured vs. unsecured personal loans. The choice will depend on your financial goals, financial situation, the amount you want to borrow,and what lenders are willing to offer you.

Check Your Personal Loan Rates

Answer a few questions to see which personal loans you pre-qualify for. It's quick and easy, and it will not impact your credit score.

People didn't used to have to remember passwords.

My grandfather passed in 2004, and he kept paper records his entire life. He may have had a few passwords and the like he had to remember, but not many.

Now, with much of our activity online, almost everything we need to access has a password.

And as cybercriminals get better at cracking these passwords, they need to be longer, more complicated, more arcane, and changed more often. It's beyond our ability to remember all of the passwords we need without making them incredibly vulnerable.

So, we outsource this to password managers, our browsers, our email programs, etc., and we depend on access to these things to the keys to the proverbial kingdom.

Help! I can't get into this account

But if we're not around with those keys, will our loved ones be able to get in?

The Insurance Information Institute cites hail damage as the most frequent claim in the United States with 2.1 percent of insured homes filing a hail damage claim. In fact, from 2013-2017, the average claim severity for hail damage was $10,182. 

To ensure you don’t have to pay over $10,000 to repair your home, brush up on your insurance policy as it relates to hail damage.

Here’s what you need to know.

How to determine if my home insurance covers hail damage

How much does insurance pay for hail damage? It depends.

Many Americans — and people all across the world — are facing a personal finance apocalypse right now. A lot of people are dealing with a sudden job loss or a major cut in hours. Some people are riding out unemployment insurance, while others may not even have that. Many people are facing unexpected and sudden medical expenses.

If you add that to the fact that almost four in five Americans were living paycheck to paycheck before coronavirus arrived on the scene, this spells a very bad financial situation for a lot of people.

One positive side effect of this period of social distancing is that, over the past two months or so, many people who have found themselves working from home and unable to go out — teachers, computer programmers, professors, accountants, office workers, engineers, managers and many others — have found themselves saving a ton of money. I’ve had several friends express quite a bit of pleasure at the amount of money building up in their checking accounts since they can’t go out and spend it freely.

In the coming months, some aspects of life will begin to return to normal, even as many people continue to choose to socially distance. Many people will adopt a mix of their old routines and their newer ones, and many will be tempted to spend some of that newfound wealth.

Here are some suggestions on how to handle that transition in a way that balances the best of the life you want with the best of the life you have.

The spread of coronavirus has shaken the economy with mass layoffs and increased uncertainty. As a result more and more Americans are finding themselves in mounting debt. In 2018, the American household debt reached an all-time high at $13.21 trillion across 300 million people. But for those with a diagnosable mental illness, debt has an even more detrimental impact.