Personal Finance

Finances aren’t everything in life but if you’re struggling to get ahead financially it makes sense to consider the cost of living where you decide to put down roots.

If you love taking photos and have a great eye, you can turn your artistic vision into cash, right from your iPhone or Android phone. These three sites will pay cash for your smartphone photos. Here's how to get started.

Back in 2007, 65% of American adults reported investing in stocks yet in 2016, only 52% said they had money invested in equities so, where is all the money going? While there are no clear answers to this question, there are alternatives to the stock market which might be palatable to certain investors. We'll explore these asset classes and ways in which even average investors might take advantage of their opportunities.

Just as it’s smart to question the doctor suggesting test after test for you at a facility he or she owns, it’s important to know how your financial advisor’s pay structure creates incentives that may harm or help your portfolio in the long run. Let's review the various ways there are for you to pay a financial advisor as well as the various ways a financial advisor can get compensated for how he/she "manages' your portfolio.

Below is a summary of the criteria I would want to find in an Investment Advisor. It is a demanding "wish list" so if you know of such an individual please let me know. Words: 640

Understanding how financial advisors get paid and what your advisor fees are will help you make smarter decisions about your money. Here are a few of the different ways financial advisors get paid and what you need to know about advisor fees. Words: 538

Trust in the proven history of the only true money, gold and silver. The charts say there is still time to buy, but any event can trigger a panic and the physical metals will not be had at prices people can now afford.

Consumers are the foundation of the U.S. economy and today's chart plots data (reflecting median spending, and adjusted for inflation) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for 12 different consumer categories over a period of nearly 75 years to show the changing way in which Americans spend their money.

I recently revisited the fascinating tactic Professor Sheena Iyengar of the Columbia Business School proposed at BlackRock’s recent Retirement Roundtable in New York to help investors save more for retirement [and what she proposes is easy to implement, and extremely effective].

I’ve always said that personal finances are more important than portfolio management, but I still think there’s probably not enough people writing or providing education on the topic so I’m going to make a concerted effort to write more about personal finance in the coming year and, to that end, here’s my list of 20 personal finance rules: