Personal Finance

You may have little to no control over whether or not a disabling illness or injury will impact your life, but you can prepare for the what-if. If you don't, you could find yourself — and your loved ones — facing financial ruin should the what-if become reality. We all need to ask ourselves: "Could we make ends meet if we were suddenly disabled?"

If you have debt or have had debt in the past, you know how it controls your life - stress, embarrassment, uncertainty. Debt causes all these feelings. It’s not fun being in debt. Instead of worrying about how you will get out of debt, let’s focus on the benefits of being debt free. Below are 9 reasons to imagine a debt free life.

Many Americans have taken it upon themselves to do the vast majority of retirement planning without the help of a financial advisor. While that is perfectly fine and legal, it is not entirely wise considering the long-term margin for error. Plenty of things can go wrong, and they do, often leaving investors lost and confused about what they can do to better their circumstances. There are 5 major errors committed by solo investors that can greatly impact their ability to maintain wealth throughout their retirement. Here they are!

...The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been collecting data on this workforce cohort since 1964. The government numbers provide some excellent insights on the income history of what we might think of as the private middle-class wage earner.

If you started making twice the amount of money that you do today, how would your spending habits change? Consider if the tables were turned, and you instead were reduced to half of your current income. Where would you likely make cuts to spending? The reality is that the money you have coming in has big implications on how expenses get prioritized – and so it’s interesting to see how people in different income brackets allocate what they have.

In the old days, if you wanted to figure out how you were doing financially, you had to sit down with a pen, paper, and a calculator and do some math but, as technology has advanced and more people took an interest in their finances, more and more financial calculators began to pop up. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands of financial calculators for you to choose. As great as this sounds, though, not all financial calculators are created equal. Many have shortcomings that could lead you down the wrong path. Today I am going to show you what to look for in financial calculators so that you can choose the one that best fits your needs.

In this article I highlight 10 ways to pay off your house early. You can pick out the one that suits you best, or find a way to combine multiple tips to pay off your mortgage in as little as half the time! Imagine not having a mortgage payment any longer. What would that enable you to do?...What are you waiting for?

While most people understand that their credit score is the key to getting approved for a loan, not all realize that having a high credit score also improves their finances because it can save you money. The higher your credit score, the lower the interest rate you will qualify for, thus saving you money over the life of your loans. This post guides you through your credit score, from everything that determines it, what helps and hurts a score, what leads to bad credit, how to check your score, and most importantly, how to improve your credit score fast.

If you want to experience financial independence or live the life of your dreams, you are going to have to avoid going into debt. Put simply, when you are in debt, you are working for someone else and, as a result, you can never reach your goal of financial independence... The key, then, is to avoid debt altogether and this post outlines ways to avoid debt so that you can make sure your money is working for you and not working against you.

Debt plagues millions of Americans every day. It is such a common problem that many of us don't even think twice about what we owe, or how we landed in such a predicament. The simplest explanation is that debt happens when you spend more than you earn but it's not actually that simple when real life steps in. Unexpected events and bad planning...can leave you facing big debt that may take years to pay off. By understanding some of the main causes of debt, we can make better financial decisions in avoiding it. Let's take a look at some of the worst offenders.