During his successful Presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to crack down on illegal immigration, promising, “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.” Do we still want a wall built? A recent MoneyTips survey says no, but Trump voters say yes. In fact,
Investing & Retiring
College is not only supposed to give you the skills you need in a particular field of study, but also the general life skills that you need to survive and thrive. Without good habits, your collegiate financial education can come via the school of hard knocks – through incurring fees and interest charges.
According to
Congratulations! At your 60th birthday, you’ve actually entered your seventh decade of living. We hope that you have given some thought to your retirement by now and made significant plans toward meeting your retirement goals. If so, age 60 is a good milestone to trigger a review of your retirement plans. (If not, start planning
MoneyTips If you want to send money directly to your friends online, there are a number of apps that allow you to do so, including Venmo. Venmo is one of the leading person-to-person (P2P) financial apps, successful to the extent that it is sometimes used as a verb (“Just Venmo me the money”). That may
In a recent survey, more people than not believe that President Trump will lower business taxes, but the same wasn’t true for their own personal taxes. On other critical issues in the news, Americans are torn, but not Trump voters.
As our government acts on repealing ObamaCare, with restructuring our antiquated tax system on deck,
Most people say they plan for retirement, but they are really planning for financial independence. The day you achieve financial independence is a great day – you have accumulated enough wealth to not have to work again, and will be able to retire whenever you choose. (We use the word “day” symbolically; as a practical
To plan properly for retirement, you have to know how much money you should expect to receive in Social Security benefits. Fortunately, you can check your estimated benefits anytime by establishing a my Social Security account on the SSA website. Unfortunately, these estimates are just that — only estimates, subject to significant change. That change
It should not come as a surprise that people with lower incomes have lower levels of retirement savings. However, many people with lower incomes have no retirement savings at all – and a recent Federal Reserve report suggests that far too many Americans across all age groups fall into that category.
The Federal Reserve’s Report
Treasury Report Targets Dodd-Frank In February of 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13772, which gave the Secretary of the Treasury 120 days to create a report reviewing financial laws and regulations with respect to seven “Core Principles”. Those principles are generally related to streamlining the financial markets and, in the President’s opinion, reducing constraints
Welcome to parenthood! You are a proud new father, simultaneously overjoyed and terrified. Since you are now responsible for another human being, you should know that the estimate of what it will cost to raise your child is approximately a quarter of a million dollars, without accounting for inflation. If you would like to send
Are you on track to meet your retirement goals? If not, now is the time to give your retirement account a little extra boost. Consider these 10 tips to increase your retirement savings and set you on track to a more comfortable retirement.
1. Start Early – If you don’t already have a retirement account,
Even though retiring is the furthest thing from the minds of most twenty-somethings, you need to invest sooner, rather than later for one reason – you have an advantage over everyone else: time. Time to let your money grow exponentially. There is a reason Albert Einstein is credited with calling compound interest “the 8th wonder
America Breaks the Debt Record According to the New York Fed’s recent Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, America has more debt than ever before. Do you? Should you be concerned in either case?
The report shows that American household debt reached $12.73 trillion in the first quarter of 2017. That tops the previous
It may be impossible to know exactly how much money you need to save for retirement, but it’s a safe bet that if you have little or no retirement savings at all, you are going to have difficulties in your post-working years. Too many Americans currently fit this profile.
According to the Economic Policy Institute
Wealthy people achieve their wealth in many different ways, but typically, those who maintain it stay wealthy for a reason: they do not spend any more than they have to on any item. That principle applies just as much to buying a smartphone or vacuum cleaner as it does to buying a multi-million dollar conglomerate.
Years of low interest rates have provided underwhelming options for investors seeking Certificates of Deposit (CDs) as a relatively safe component of their portfolio. Yields above 1% are hard to find and often require tying up your money for a lengthy period. Even with a laddering strategy, the poor yields may not be worth the
Congratulations! You have saved for your child’s education using a state 529 plan and built up a decent nest egg to send him or her off to college with minimal financial worries. Once a choice of college is made, you can apply the 529 funds toward the educational costs — but beware of these mistakes
We all want to help our children get the best start in life, and for many that includes helping them avoid excessive debt. That can lead you to co-signing student loans (or other credit sources) to help your children qualify for credit. You can then teach them how to manage debt responsibly. Isn’t that desirable?
Are you a procrastinator who waits until the very last moment to file your taxes? Thanks to Emancipation Day, the filing deadline is April 18, 2017, to file your taxes for the 2016 tax year. That gives you a few more days to consider last-minute ways to lower your taxes.
Start by reviewing your possible
April is National Financial Literacy Month. Why do we dedicate this calendar page to highlighting financial skills and education? The tax deadline? Sound financial decisions are important all year long, but most Americans never learned how to manage money or save for goals, so financial security is a bigger challenge than it needs to be.
You have just received an inheritance. What do you do now? You could spend it on some extravagance, but you would be better off doing two things first: assessing the tax ramifications and thinking about some investment options.
“Death taxes” are somewhat misunderstood, as people can find the two types of death taxes confusing. Estate
In his first few weeks in office, President Trump has issued multiple executive orders covering a range of topics, and done so with great fanfare. He has established himself as a man of action — but how will his actions affect labor and the workplace? Predicting Trump’s strategy is difficult, if not impossible, but we
Contributing to a retirement account can be difficult for lower income households, but one can argue that it is even more important for those families to take advantage of all the retirement savings options that are possible. One of the lesser-known options applies directly to lower-income families – the retirement savings tax credit. Note that
One of the biggest mistakes many investors make is not considering the effects of taxes on their returns. Local, state and federal taxes can take a big bite out of your investment earnings.
This makes it critical to formulate strategies for minimizing the impact of taxes on your investments. Here are six strategies that can
You probably know about potential IRA tax traps related to withdrawals, rollovers, and estate planning that can saddle you with penalties and surprise tax bills. Did you know that the type of investments you hold could also hand you a surprise tax bill and potentially ruin your IRA status?
The most common of the traps
Slower Credit Growth for the New Year Are you using more or less credit these days? If your habits track the latest data released by the Federal Reserve, your rate of consumer credit growth has slowed considerably.
The Fed’s release for January 2017 revealed that outstanding consumer credit rose by $8.8 billion to $3.77 trillion
For many people, tax refund day is like Christmas in the spring. As they prepare their tax returns over the next few weeks, millions of Americans will hold their breath in anticipation of how much their tax refund is going to be — and then run to the mailbox every day hoping to receive their
Which Is True? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent consumer and financial watchdog agency that offers advice to consumers and levies fines against financial institutions engaged in questionable practices.
The CFPB is an unchecked, poorly controlled agency that restricts the opportunity of financial institutions to operate within a free market and applies
It’s never too late or too early to think about your retirement. One of the most common and effective retirement savings options is an individual retirement account, more commonly referred to as an IRA. This article will look at the differences between a traditional IRA and another type of savings account called a Roth IRA.
Social Security is generally considered a tax-free benefit, but that is not always the case. Depending on the amount of alternate income that you have in retirement and your filing status, you could owe taxes on up to 85% of your Social Security benefits.
If you receive Social Security or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)
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