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.
Unlike some influential figures of his time, Abraham Lincoln did not grow up as a child of privilege. Born in a one-room log cabin to humble parents, he completed backbreaking work alongside his father to scrape out a family living.
Lincoln could wield an axe and clear land like no other, but he didn’t enjoy the hard labor of country life. Determined to free himself of his “country bumpkin” upbringing, he set his eye on more prosperous, risky pursuits.
His ambition got him into a big financial jam early on, but the real story is what Lincoln did to get out of it.
In my Financial Essentials class, Week 2 often covers the topic of debt. It starts with a conversation about compounding interest, and how this “Eighth Wonder of the World” can either hurt you or help you through “good” or “bad” debt.
But a recent conversation with a friend has me thinking: Is there really any such thing as good debt for the typical family?
I’d like to discuss two forms of debt which we gladly justify--or label as “good debt”--and for a moment take a contrarian view as to why these commonly accepted forms of good debt may not be so great.