Finance

America is facing a retirement crisis. It is a ticking time bomb and most people have their heads in the sand. The long and the short of it is that the older you get, you don’t spend less, you just spend differently - and more. The fun goes down and the healthcare costs go up.

A budget is a basic necessity, even if you do it just once, to understand where your money is flowing yet most people spend money as quickly as it comes in - like sand flowing through their fingers - [so this article takes a]...look at the latest spending breakdown of Americans to see where most of our money is going.

Below are 10 factors considered by insurance companies when establishing what you have to pay for auto insurance coverage and some suggestions (some rather outlandish) how you might be able to positively influence some of them to your financial benefit.

How much money do you really need to retire on? We’re bombarded with messages about retirement savings – that...[we] haven’t saved enough; that company pension plans are underfunded; that the Canada Pension Plan [or U.S. Social Security] won’t be able to handle the influx of boomers who are set to retire over the next 10 to 15 years. If that’s you, then you might be panicking right now. Stop! According to a new book retirees may not need as much as they’ve been led to believe.

That central banks have saved us from a financial crisis is a myth. Central banks have caused our financial crises, not saved us from them. Central banks don’t serve people, or even societies. They serve banks.

...The global pension outlook is looking bad and a large part of this stems from people living longer and simply not saving enough while they work...By 2050 global pension funds will be underfunded by $400 trillion. Does this sound sustainable?

Medical researchers have created a quiz that predicts how long you’re going to live [i.e how many years you will live into retirement - if any!]. It’s called a ‘mortality index‘ and it’s composed of 12 questions. It claims to predict with some accuracy whether you’ll live out the decade.

The U.S. is a tipping nation, and you are expected to leave some kind of a tip in dozens of service scenarios, so here's a handy guide to follow.

Divorce happens and, unfortunately, many who are divorcing hold certain financial misconceptions about the process... Here are four of the most important ones.

Whether you hate tipping and want to plan your vacations around countries where it's an unheard of or are just interested in how other cultures handle tipping it's good to be aware of the places where it's unexpected to tip, where it's uncommon but appreciated, and where it's considered an outright insult.