Let’s be honest. A whole slew of Americans, almost two-thirds by several counts, have no idea how much money they spend in a month. They also have little idea where their money goes. Yes, taxes and other deductions take a chunk right off the top of their paychecks, but the rest seems to just evaporate. If this sounds familiar, the first piece of good news is that it’s not just you.
You know it’s coming. Without fail, it happens every year in late December and spills over well into January. Call it the Raging River of Resolutions or the Betterment Blitz. Whatever name you use, you surely know the feeling of being bombarded with self-empowerment content and ads for ways to make the upcoming year better than the one before.
emergency fund for whatever life throws at us. If you’re still recovering from the financial fallout of COVID, saving for a future emergency may still seem like a distant dream for “one of these days”, but there are creative ways to start adding to your stash now that won’t impact your daily life, even when times are tight.
When you and your partner are focusing on paying the bills and trimming debt, it’s easy to put fun on the back burner. After all, dining out is a sure-fire way to blow the budget. Expensive vacations? Entirely out of the question!
There is something about the dawn of a new year that brings out our willingness to kick old habits to the curb and start afresh. If you’re ready to create impactful and effective financial resolutions that best serve you and your goals, it’s time to lean in. With a few tweaks, a little planning and some disciplined effort, 2023 can be the year you start to make your money goals come to life.
One of the best things about a vacation is taking your mind off mundane, day-to-day concerns and responsibilities, and focusing on pleasure. Trips are the time to live it up! If you put a little effort into making your money stretch farther on your getaway, you can have just as much fun and save enough to take additional excursions each year.
When you think about it, planning is one of the best parts of taking an exciting vacation. Putting your dazzling itinerary together and daydreaming about all the amazing things you’ll see can really get the juices flowing. However, if you haven’t planned for the financial impact of your trip, money concerns in the months after your excursion can tarnish your happy memories.
s or become independent young adults. But a better way to help your children understand earning, saving, and investing is to teach them such skills while they are young. This will make finance more intuitive for them – rather like giving your child a tablet when very young so they become “digitally native.”
Finance like fashion can be “in” one day and “out” the next. New approaches emerge and everyone piles into them. Then they move on to the next big thing. But some tenets stand the course of time and never really lose their luster.
It is easy to think of wealth as something that happens overnight. The media often emphasizes rags to riches stories, that stock squeeze on Redit that made someone tens of millions of dollar. Or the big kitchen table idea that went on to become a billion dollar business in five years. News sites share stories of happy lottery winners, reports that also overlook the enormous odds ticket buyers face when they lay down their hard-earned money.
