From ValuePenguin The average household's cost of food is climbing, but there are myriad ways to find a plateau or, better yet, a cliff. One option is to consider the best grocery credit cards: The cards analyzed by ValuePenguin have varying benefits as to how valuable the rewards are for using your plastic in the [...]
Long-term care insurance (photo from Shutterstock) Long-term care planning is really hard to talk about. It can be frightening to imagine ourselves with diminished capacity and needing help from others. And since we find it challenging to discuss it, we often don’t plan for it. Very wealthy people can pay cash for upscale [...]
Five years before they retire, older workers start focusing seriously on the big changes ahead, says Emily Guy Birkin, in her book, The 5 Years Before You Retire: Retirement Planning When You Need It the Most. In those last few years, you can get a lot done. Here is a countdown of some of the tasks [...]
Estate-planning can be confusing...and boring. Yet, it is a critical part of your financial plan. This article is from Nerd Wallet. Dying intestate (will-less) leaves your heirs with a potential mess. And yet, 61% of Americans die without one, says a recent Harris Interactive poll for RocketLawyer, a legal website. In fact, 28% of us would rather do anything than [...]
“Americans—women especially—aren’t getting the message that they need to start saving for retirement with their very first job,” says personal finance columnist Liz Weston, author of Deal With Your Debt. As a working mom, whole weeks may go by without the chance to sit down or even think. You’re managing a career, making decisions for your family, [...]
Obtaining professional advice is a significant step and should not be approached lightly. As with investors and their objectives and constraints, professional advisors also differ in their philosophy, processes, services, education, experience, and their ability to add value. Professional advisors work in many fields and hold various titles, such as investment advisor, financial planner, accountant, [...]
Forming a strategic alliance is similar to getting married: It's easy to do, but maintaining a satisfying relationship requires flexibility and commitment. Following certain guidelines when first establishing an affiliation and participating in ongoing communication are key to forming a fruitful collaboration. What's in a Name? There are many types of strategic alliances, but they [...]
The goal of good health should be at the core of decisions you make about money. As any wise person will tell you—and many have, from the Roman poet Virgil to Gandhi—health is wealth. The irony is that the converse is also true—a growing body of research suggests that financial problems actually can lead to [...]
Tax Freedom Day® Tax Freedom Day, as calculated by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan economic research think tank, is the day when the U.S. as a whole has earned enough money to pay off its total tax bill for the year. It provides an easy way for Americans to gauge the total amount of taxes [...]
Recent changes in the tax law could affect your benefits. Laws that were enacted as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 included several new rules that might affect your Social Security and other tax benefits. End to Social Security “file and suspend” option Under the IRS file and suspend option, married couples could [...]
