I was lucky enough to be able to try out a new service from TransUnion. I will disclose I was provided the service to try and review. This review is based on me testing the service and my opinions are my own. If you aren’t familiar with TransUnion, then let me give you a quick…
I have had a Capital One 360 checking account for some time now, so I figured it would be time to provide a review of the service. Many of you might know of this service, but Capital One bought ING Direct and relabeled the banking service to Capital One 360. They offer both a checking and savings account, which are online only. They are essentially an electronic checking and savings account. I have really enjoyed the service and Capital One made it extremely easy to setup. Here is my Capital One 360 review.
One of the longer running pieces of personal finance advice is to never buy a new car. Seriously, most experts use the word “NEVER!” I am cool with that, especially as someone who has purchased quite a few new cars, I have learned my lesson. The justification of this advice is you can save a lot of money by just buying a car one or two years old. The majority of depreciation happens within the first year. After that, most cars depreciate on a sliding scale. Some do it slower than others, but I am not getting into that. So, let’s talk about this “never buy a new car” advice.
First, let me give mad props to my fellow personal finance blogger, Holly of Club Thrifty, for rocking a Wall Street Journal essay and a Fox Business TV interview. She was dealing with the topic of money and marriage. This is a very controversial topic in the world of personal finance and I understand why. I wrote about it briefly some time ago when I was talking about paying off a spouses debt when they incurred it before marriage. That one got me some angry comments and emails, but I powered through. I don’t mind causing a little controversy. I read both the arguments on the WSJ piece and I am going to provide my argument for separate finances for married couples.
You have probably heard of the saying “money talks!” If you haven’t then it is a simple premise. If you have money, then you have power and influence. The more money you have, then the more power and influence you have. We see this premise in action everywhere really. It really shows up in business and politics. I figured I would share a story with you that would bring home this phrase. You probably don’t need a story to understand that money really does talk, but you are getting one anyway. This is about a co-worker that was deep into politics, so much that she was planning a career switch.
Over the past decade, more and more people have found themselves deep in financial debt. While there may be some obvious reasons why some people have gotten into debt, there are also many other overlooked factors that could have led to their accumulation of debt. I have spent a good amount of my adult life in debt. I know how it feels. There is nothing fun about it, but that doesn’t mean it has to define you. Remember that you are the one in control of your money, so don’t let it take control of you. We all make mistakes and debt should be one that you only make once. I don’t plan on making the debt mistake again, so I hope you do the same.
I wanted to write this article as a follow-up or add-on to my “How You Can Get Rich Quick” article I put up last week. My idea for this is to try and figure out why we, as humans, fall for Ponzi schemes. I have a ton of questions and can only think of a few things that can explain why people jump into such schemes.
It is always a good idea to pay down your debt. Surely, you have heard that mantra before. It is shouted from every personal finance rooftop on the internet. But why is it such a good idea, especially when you look at it in the light applying for a new car loan? There are many reasons you might not be immediately aware of, so here we go.
My home air conditioner is severely inefficient, so my wife and I decided to look into saving money another way. We love to have our room very cold when we sleep, but we just couldn’t afford it. In a way to save money, I bought a window air conditioner and looked to see how much I would save. Check out my saving experiment and see how much I was able to save each and every month.
I have been following the questions posed by Chase Bank back in February about average couples. It is pretty much about love and money. I answered the questions in my head, but not on here because I found one question that I wanted to dig into deeper. I have been having an internal debate about this question. There are some people on the side of a simple yes. They would pay off their spouse’s debt if they had it. They feel that their money is together. Some feel it is part of being married. I, on the other hand, don’t know what I would do, but I lean very much toward no. I think this question is conditional. Let me explain my reasons.
As a personal finance blogger, I have used or tested quite a few tools and resources in order to help me get to my main financial goals. There are so many websites out there that it can be hard to choose. I wanted to personally hand select some of the helpful money tools for you, so…
As I look toward creating some great goals for 2013, I had to put my retirement savings under the microscope. How am I doing now that I am funding it? How much more do I need to save? When do I want to retire? All of these questions are great and can be easy to deal with with the right resources. Luckily for me, I was able to locate a great infographic from Money Crashers. They ask the simple, yet powerful question, “Will you be ready for retirement?”.
