When I was a teenager in Virginia, my father befriended a group of Latin American immigrant workers.
They hardly spoke a word of english, so my dad, along with a group of other volunteers, cretaed an ESL program and worked to teach them english. A lot of my dad’s free time went into helping them learn and a close friendship quickly formed. He affectionately called them “The hermanos” (the brothers).
Conflicting priorities are at the heart of much of our everyday lives. We have a long list of things we know we should get done, but with limited time, resources, and energy. Unfortunately, family finances often fall to the bottom of the list.
This is a problem because our own financial picture and family goals probably look different than someone others. As a result, we need take steps to make sure our own goals are getting done, and in the right order.
As you think about how to prioritize your own financial decisions, here are some guidelines to consider.
No one likes paying more than their share of taxes. As a result, we’d all be wise to do a little family tax planning as the year goes along, but as the saying goes “time waits for no man.” Heck, can you believe it’s already November?!
For the wannabe tax-saver in you, here are 5 steps you can take today to potentially lower your taxes. There are many types of deductions available, but the one’s I’ll mention here are, I believe, some of the most “actionable.”
Have you ever read an article or seen an image that makes such a deep impression on you that you have a hard time forgetting it? This happened to me last year.
I was reading an article about the success of regular investors like you and me. It was comparing how investors perform compared to different types of assets. For example, how does the average person’s investing success compare to the performance of energy stocks, or gold, or the S&P 500?
It’s not glamorous or financially “sexy,” but finances rarely are. I’m talking about the less appealing elements of building a sound financial plan. For most families the first action item is to build an emergency fund.
The drill is fairly straightforward, but building an emergency fund is often reliant on manually moving money from each paycheck into a separate checking or savings account...with a rock-bottom interest rate. By month’s end, a meager 20 cents of interest has trickled into your account. Yipee.
In this post I’ll tell you how to build an emergency fund more successfully and how to earn much more interest on your savings, while still keeping your emergency fund safe and accessible.