If you live in fear of racking up debt, you might be hesitant to pay any of your bills with a credit card. While you should, if at all possible, avoid putting bills on a credit card when you can’t afford to pay them, you do have the option to pay most bills with a...
Sometimes a deal can feel too good to pass up, and that can especially be the case with a gift card deal—particularly since federal law gives you five years from the date a gift card is activated to use it before it expires. If you’ve got a purchase planned in the semi-near future for places...
You know you need to pay your credit card bill on time, and that you should always pay enough to avoid keeping a balance. But if you struggle with managing your money, you might be tempted to pay off your credit card immediately after every purchase. This payment strategy would essentially be treating your credit...
In many ways, the digital age has made gift giving easier. You can fill up a single online shopping cart and send gifts anywhere in the world. At the same time, some things are not as easy as they used to be. Remember when you could just walk into a store and buy someone a...
It’s never too late to start saving for retirement, but anyone who starts early sure does get a huge advantage. The reason for this is compound interest, which we’ll run the numbers on below. If you’ve been waiting to invest in your retirement until you check off other financial goals (cough cough, students loans),… Read...
With all the wisdom you have now, imagine if you could turn back time and get a head start building good credit from an early age. While you can’t change history for yourself, you can help your own kids build a strong financial foundation—and from an earlier age than you might realize. Even if your...
You have your basic checking and savings accounts—beyond that, how can different types of accounts serve your savings goals? What’s the smartest way to stash your hard-earned funds? We’ve recommended before that dividing your money into multiple accounts helps you see all your saving goals separately, so they’ll be… Read more…
Your credit score makes the difference between getting approved or denied a mortgage, car loan, student loan—or any other kind of loan. With plenty of online tools to check your credit score for free, there’s no reason you shouldn’t know the magic three-digit number. But how accurate are these online tools? Here’s… Read more…
Buying a house is a complex and emotional process, and we don’t always make perfect decisions once we’ve determined a particular property is our dream house. But even if you’re careful to think of your home as an asset and an investment, it’s difficult to swing a down payment and harder to figure out how...
