Your Money Timeline

Key Takeaways When it comes to investing money, the order in which you invest matters. Before investing in anything, make sure your emergency fund is set up and topped off. It’s important to know what your short, intermediate, and long-term goals are in order to know what assets you should invest in and when.

Scarcity Versus Abundance Mindsets

Key Takeaways A recent Prudential Financial survey of Millennials found that most of them had a rather somber view of their retirement years. Millennials grew up in a time of great technological advancements, but also some very significant events that have shaped a scarcity mindset when it comes to how they feel about the future. […]

The Down Payment Myth

Key Takeaways A recent survey of 3,000 Millennials found that 53% of them said they hadn’t bought a house yet because they hadn’t saved enough money. You don’t need a down payment of 20% of the value of the home in order to buy it; there are several loan types that don’t require that amount. […]

Is It Ok to Ask For Help?

Key Takeaways A recent study showed that many parents are still paying some bills for their adult children, mainly car insurance and cell phone bills. Asking for financial assistance from family members is ok, but there is always a happy medium between not acknowledging money issues at all, or constantly giving money away no matter […]

Step Away from the Social Feed

Key Takeaways A recent study found that 57% of Millennials buy products online from ads or videos they see on their social feeds that they were not expecting to buy. A good way to track your finances so you can see what you truly can afford to buy, is to use an online financial portal. […]

Insuring Your Future

Key Takeaways A recent study found that 75% of young people, parents with children, don’t have life insurance. Some of the reasons given for not having life insurance were that they don’t like the process, they have a false sense of security, they prioritize paying off student debt, they are saving for a home, or […]

Investing Expectations

Key Takeaways There’s a big difference in what the Millennial generation expects in terms of returns on investment in the stock market versus what their parents, the Boomer generation, expect. Going back over 100 years, the return on investment in the stock market is about 10%. There are three things to keep in mind when […]

The Estimated Tax Man

Key Takeaways If you work in the gig economy, you are considered self-employed. As a self-employed person, you have to pay estimated taxes quarterly, or you face penalties and you are charged interest. If you worked for an employer, they would take Social Security and Medicare from your paycheck as well as pay the IRS […]

Smart Spending

Key Takeaways The idea that the more expensive the item, the better quality it is, no longer applies. Many of the decisions we make are based on emotion, so when it comes to spending, you want to make sure you know what you value, so you don’t spend money on extras you don’t need. Being […]

The Debt Shovel

Key Takeaways  How we take on debt and how we pay it back can be a bit of an intangible concept. When you initially take on debt, it’s tax free, but when you pay it back, it’s with money after tax, and that means it takes more of your income to pay that debt back […]