Nearly 57% of American adults have savings of less than $1,000, while 39% have zero savings. Following a few quintessential personal finance practices, however, can help you achieve a healthier financial profile. Here are the seven key personal finance habits to form immediately: Create a detailed budget: Budgeting is one of the oldest and most […]
Welcome to the 2018 home-buying market. Rising demand and an extremely tight supply of homes, especially in the critical starter-home market, make it difficult to realize your goal of home ownership. In this buyer’s market, you’ll need two important things to land your dream home – more money and a higher credit score. Data from […]
Whoever is holding the winning ticket for Powerball’s jackpot is likely discovering that picking the right numbers was the easy part. Sold in New Jersey, a single ticket snagged the $315.3 million grand prize in the game’s Saturday night drawing. That amount is reduced to $183.2 million if the winner (or winners) chooses a lump […]
Looking for free checking? You’ll have much better luck finding it at a credit union than at a bank. Some 82% of credit unions offer free checking accounts, compared to just 38% of banks, according to an analysis released Monday by the personal-finance company Bankrate. Bankrate analyzed 50 of the nation’s largest credit unions. The […]
Desperate homeowners are stretching their finances to buy a home, and lenders and mortgage backers are increasingly willing to accommodate them. It’s difficult to purchase a home in a buyer’s market – and 2018 certainly meets that standard. Pent-up demand and an extreme shortage of homes have led to a rapid increase in prices that […]
Growing up doesn’t always mean moving out of your parents’ house, as evidenced by the swelling ranks of adult children who have returned home after college — or who never moved out. Called “the boomerang generation,” this group now includes about one out of every three Americans between the ages of 18 to 34, according […]
Most Americans don’t shy away from spending on their furry, feathery and scaly family members. According to the American Pet Products Association, pet owners across the U.S. spent about $29 billion in pet food in 2017. They spent $17.07 billion in vet care. And that number is likely to rise. The APPA estimates Americans will […]
You may have grown up hearing that you should save for retirement as soon as possible — a new report suggests having twice your salary by age 35 — but new data shows that some people haven’t actually put this advice into practice. New research from Northwestern Mutual’s Planning & Progress Study 2018 shows that […]
If you’re getting your college grad a gift of money, you might want to include a book on how to put that present to good use. Financial planning might not be a priority — 70 percent of grads are finishing school with significant debt. But with U.S. employers adding an average of 200,000 jobs per […]
Getting control of your personal finances is really quite simple – but it is not easy. If it were so, most all of us would not be reading this article. In fact, recapturing your personal financial health is one of the greatest stresses a family can experience. Millions are spent each year on books and […]
Nearly all IT projects face a similar major challenge: Budgets. Only about half of all projects end up completed under budget, according to the Project Management Institute. This is largely because often, budgets are estimates based on what is known when the project is started, said Alan Zucker, founding principal of Project Management Essentials. “We […]
Traveling, especially abroad, as a Latina can be a layered experience. Growing up in such a tight-knit community that traditionally doesn’t encourage solo travel may make it seem like an impossible feat to experience. Olga Maria Czarkowski, the founder of the bilingual online travel community, Latinas Who Travel, shares: “As a Latina woman, sometimes it is difficult to travel since […]
