Key Considerations for Smooth Wealth Transfer Planning
By Tim McMahon |
4 Tips for Staying on Top of Your Debt
Debt can be an effective means to an end (such as home ownership) but it does need to be managed. Experts like Robert Kiyosaki say that there are two types of debt “good debt” and “bad debt”. Good debt is debt that “puts money in your pocket” and bad debt “takes money out of your pocket”. Examples of good debt are loans to start a business, buy rental housing, etc. Bad debt is consumer loans and car loans. A home purchase is actually borderline because it is an asset and its value generally keeps up with inflation but it is more like a forced savings plan (that you have to maintain) rather than a good investment. In our article The Wealthy Buy Assets, the Poor Buy Liabilities, and the Middle Class Buy Liabilities Believing They Are Assets we discuss this in further detail.Â
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Harboring Some Junk? Useful Items You Can Sell for Quick Cash
Junk isn’t something that you need. It’s not something you want, either. Cash, however, is a whole other story, everyone likes to pick up a bit of extra cash. If you have junk, selling some of it can help you acquire cash and at the same time make it easier to keep your stuff organized and neat.Â
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Frugal Family: How to Save Money on Regular Home Maintenance
It’s much more relaxing to reside in a home that Isn’t constantly breaking down. In order to do so, you must put sufficient time and effort into giving it proper maintenance. However, maintenance doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. If you want to reduce your routine home maintenance expenses, you should test out these avenues right away.
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4 Overlooked Financial Costs to Include in Your Family Budget
If you’ve read any of our articles you know that we believe that creating a family budget is critical to effectively managing your finances. This is especially true if you want to get out of credit card debt, since you need to be sure that your expenses don’t exceed your income. Unfortunately, many people create a budget and think everything is fine and then when the end of the month rolls around they still are “short”. This is often the result of “missed” expenses. Here are a few financial costs that are often overlooked:
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Time for a Change? 5 Tips for Home Renovating on a Budget
Sooner or later, you may get tired of the look or arrangement of your home or simply need to update. Of course, renovation can prove expensive… especially if you don’t manage the process with care. Here are a few tips for renovating on a budget.
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Think Ahead: 4 Steps You Can Take Now to Prevent Expensive Home Repairs Later
Home ownership can be a source of continual pride and happiness for both you and your family. However, even the most well-maintained home can also be accompanied by a multitude of costly home maintenance activities. In this article we will discuss several preemptive measures that you can take to avoid the most expensive types of home repair.
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Recovering from the Unexpected: 4 Tips for Financially Dealing with a Medical Condition
After you have a health issue, a lot of things change in your life. It comes with major stress and financial problems as well. However, although it may not be easy, if you don’t give up and instead take the right action, you can move past it over time. Here are four tips you should use to help you in dealing with the financial aspects of a medical condition:
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Make Extra Money while Going to College
College is expensive and can set the stage for debt payments for years and years to come. The average student today expects to rack up about $40,000 in student loans and believes it will take 10 years to pay off them off. According to U.S. News “The standard repayment plan for federal student loans puts borrowers on a 10-year track to pay off their debt, but research has shown the average bachelor’s degree holder takes 21 years to pay off his or her loans.”Â
The first step is to make every effort to not rack up the debt in the first place this can include things like going to Community College to get the basics first (at a much lower cost) and earning money while in college.Â
4 Ways You Can Reduce Healthcare Expenses
Even if you have insurance, medical care costs can be expensive. Many policies have deductibles and co-pays that you have to cover out of your own pocket. And to make matters worse health insurance costs themselves are increasing. As a matter of fact, health insurance costs are up over 40% since 2005 compared to overall prices being up “only” about 28% as you can see from this chart from InflationData.Â
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Biggest Budgeting Challenges when Decorating a Home
Interior designing seems easy, but sometimes people seem to forget that there are many factors you need to take into consideration. For most of them, sticking to their intentions is the hardest part, and they quit renovating their home in the middle of the process. If you want to avoid this, you should pay attention to a few things and, as the result, you’ll end up with the best interior possible. Your major advantage will be knowing the obstacles you may expect and how to work through them. So, start making some plans and thinking about what kind of style will suit you the most.
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4 Sources of Quick Cash
With debt at an all-time high in the United States and with most Americans carrying thousands of dollars of debt, it is no wonder that many people are looking at ways to cut back, pay down debt and trim expenses. While some changes are obvious, such as making a budget and sticking to it each month, some ways to pay down debt may be a bit more hidden. Here are four smart resources for raising cash if you feel as if you are in debt up to your eyeballs.
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Car Repair on a Budget
In days gone by you could expect that your car repair bill would consist of 50% for parts and 50% for Labor. So you could easily save half the cost of a repair by doing the job yourself. But then parts started getting cheaper (probably due to competition from China) and you could save 2/3rds of the cost of a repair by doing the job yourself. But some jobs also got more complicated requiring fancy computerized diagnostic tools and specialized knowledge. However there are many car repairs that are easy and you can do yourself, often saving you hundreds of dollars.
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