.Protect Your Finances From the COVID-19 Recession by Doing These Things Now

By Doug Whiteman MoneyWise March 17, 2020

Protect Your Finances From the COVID-19 Recession by Doing These Things Now

As restaurants close, airplanes are grounded, sports arenas and theaters go dark, and financial markets implode, economists and President Donald Trump are acknowledging that the economy may be heading into a coronavirus recession.

Some experts are even saying a recession — sparked by the virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19 — is already underway, despite the Federal Reserve's extreme measures to prevent one.

The economy has been healthy and growing since 2009, the longest stretch without a recession in U.S. history. But if the downturn has finally arrived, you need to take immediate action to protect your family finances.

Here's how to be ready for the coming financial storm.

.10 Best Things to Keep in a Safe Deposit Box

By Bob Niedt September 28, 2018

As digital records and cloud storage become the norm, the stodgy safe deposit box is under threat to join our growing list of things that will soon disappear forever. “They’re probably going to be extinct at some point,” says Michele Awash, a certified financial planner with Family Office Solutions in Greenville, Del. “Everything is electronic these days.”

But don’t rush to declare the safe deposit box a relic of the past just yet. You still need to be able to produce certain original documents, rather than digital scans or photocopies, and some valuables simply can’t be digitized.

Installing a safe in your home is one alternative to a safe deposit box, but they aren’t foolproof, says Luke W. Reynolds, Chief of the FDIC's Community Outreach Section. Home safes are more susceptible to fire and water damage, not to mention theft, than bank safe deposit boxes, he says.

“Personally, I use both,” says William P. Simons IV, president and CEO of Rust Insurance Agency in Washington, D.C. Hard-to-replace items that Simons might need frequently, such as his passport, are kept in the home safe, while other important items he rarely needs stay in his safe deposit box. Here are 10 of the best things to keep in a safe deposit box at your bank.

.9 Things You'll Regret Keeping in a Safe Deposit Box

By Bob Niedt | September 18, 2018

In today’s digital age, in which seemingly anything that matters is stored virtually “in the cloud,” a physical safe deposit box comes across as a relic of the bricks-and-mortar past. But don’t be too hasty to dismiss the importance of keeping certain valuables securely tucked away in your bank’s vault. A safe deposit box can offer critical protection for important documents and prized possessions.

“I have birth certificates and Social Security cards and old valuable baseball cards that were my father’s in a safe deposit box,” says William P. Simons IV, president and CEO of Rust Insurance Agency in Washington, D.C.

A safe deposit box isn’t a wise choice for everything, however. We talked to experts to come up with a list of nine things you might come to regret locking away in your bank, which isn’t open nights, holidays or perhaps even weekends. Instead, Simons recommends storing important items that you need to access more frequently or on short notice in a fireproof home safe that’s bolted to the floor. See the list of safe deposit box no-no’s.

Keeping a stash of cash in a safe deposit box isn’t a good idea for several reasons, warn experts. First, if you need the money in an emergency, but the bank is closed, you’re out of luck. Second, the idle cash loses buying power over time due to the effects of inflation.

.10 Lessons Learned From 30 Years of Writing About Money

Nobody Told Me By Jonathan Clements | February 8, 2020

I HAVE DEVOTED my entire adult life to learning about money. That might sound like cruel-and-unusual punishment, but I’ve mostly enjoyed it. For more than three decades, I’ve spent my days perusing the business pages, reading finance books, scanning academic studies and talking to countless folks about their finances.

Yet, despite this intense financial education, it took me a decade or more to learn many of life’s most important money lessons and, indeed, some key insights have only come to me in recent years. Here are 10 things I wish I’d been told in my 20s—or told more loudly, so I actually listened:

1. A small home is the key to a big portfolio. My first wife and I bought a modest house, because we worried that we couldn’t really afford anything bigger. I ended up living in that house for two decades.

Financially, it turned out to be one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, because it allowed me to save great gobs of money. That’s clear to me in retrospect. But I wish I’d known it was a smart move at the time, because I wouldn’t have wasted so many hours wondering whether I should have bought a larger place.