What Not To Do While Trying To Get Out of Debt
.What Not To Do While Trying To Get Out of Debt
Jaime Catmull, GOBankingRates November 6, 2020
If worrying about how to pay off debt keeps you awake some nights, late-night television abounds with alleged solutions. Some ads even promise to get rid of your debt for pennies on the dollar.
Fall victim to these deals and you might be left with worse financial troubles than before. But these aren’t the only foolish ways of paying off debt. Financial experts shared some common mistakes people make while trying to get out of debt avoid making these same missteps.
1. Not Having a Reasonable Debt Repayment Strategy
When sitting down to tackle your debt, the first step should be to see how much total debt you actually have. Add up any debt you have accrued from student loans, car loans, credit cards, medical debt, home equity loans, payday loans, personal loans and IRS and government debt. If you’ve been dealing with debt for a while, this might add up to a scary number that could leave you feeling overwhelmed, and you might feel like you don’t know how to even begin paying it back.
8 Ways To Defend Your Family Finances
.8 Ways To Defend Your Family Finances From Whatever Comes Next
Ethan Rotberg Sat, November 7, 2020
A family budget is a delicate thing to balance, even without a pandemic crashing through and jumbling your finances. In a chaotic year like this, with the country dealing with a recession, ugly unemployment rates, political tensions and new waves of the coronavirus, you’ll need to arm yourself with extra financial tools to protect your household from potential money troubles.
Here are eight ways you can defend your family’s finances, starting today.
1. Clear as much debt as you can
Paying down debt may be the most impactful way to protect your family’s finances — especially if high-interest debts like credit cards are draining more of your cash each month.
How to Invest Your 401(K) in Causes You Care About
How to Invest Your 401(K) in Causes You Care About
My Two Cents Oct. 16, 2020 By Charlotte Cowles@charlottecowles
The Cut’s financial advice columnist Charlotte Cowles answers readers’ personal questions about personal finance. Email your money conundrums to mytwocents@nymag.com
Sustainable investing: One more thing to feel guilty about not doing? A luxury for rich people who want to justify the piles of money they’re making in the stock market while the rest of us fret about our jobs? Or a relatively painless action you can take with your retirement savings and then sleep better at night?
Technically, it’s all three. But let’s not overcomplicate things. The good news is that if you have a retirement account, it’s easier than ever to invest it in a way that reflects your values. I think of it as kind of like voting with your money, which is to say, it’s more effective than screaming into the void.
Dave Ramsey Warns: Don't Do These 10 Things With Your Money
.Dave Ramsey Warns: Don't Do These 10 Things With Your Money
Sarah Cunnane, MoneyWise November 3, 2020
Dave Ramsey says you have to stop causing your money troubles before you can solve them.
The money management guru has doled out his signature blend of tough-love financial advice and Biblical wisdom since 1992. He learned it all the hard way: In his 20s, Ramsey built a fortune as a house flipper but lost it all when banks started calling in his debts. He had to buckle down to build back up from bankruptcy.
Now his radio show is syndicated on more than 600 stations, and he’s authored several books. He teaches Americans how to avoid wallowing in debt — even during the current financial crisis.
Plenty Of Fish In The Sea
.Plenty Of Fish In The Sea
Posted by TEBI on November 3, 2020
Look At It This Way
In Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella The Old Man and the Sea, a fisherman who had gone three months without catching anything finally lands a prize marlin and then spends three days and nights trying to reel him in.
On finally killing the giant fish, the man lashes the marlin to the side of his boat and heads for home with the trophy, only for marauding sharks to devour the carcass along the way.
The single-minded devotion of this man to dominating that one fish can be likened to the time and effort that some investors make in finding a bargain in the stock market.
Like the fisherman, their pride overtakes them and they lose all perspective.
Scary Stuff
.Scary Stuff
Jonathan Clements | October 31, 2020
IT’S HALLOWEEN, but not much frightens me—at least financially. My portfolio is broadly diversified, I have the insurance I need, and I have enough set aside for retirement. The highly improbable could happen, but I’m not going to lose sleep over that.
Still, even for those of us in decent financial shape, I see two key reasons for concern. We have no control over either—which is why they might seem scary—but we can take steps to limit the potential fallout.
Rising rates. I’m not forecasting a sharp increase in interest rates. But if that came to pass, not only would bonds take it on the chin, but also we could see grim short-term stock market returns.
U.S. stocks have spent much of the past three decades at what was once considered nosebleed valuations. The long decline in interest rates is a key reason. As the yields on bonds and cash investments have fallen since the early 1980s, investors have become increasingly willing to buy stocks, and that’s driven up price-earnings multiples.
How to Live Like You’re Already Retired
.How to Live Like You’re Already Retired
Posted by Jacob Schroeder October 16, 2020
The late poet Mary Oliver never worked an interesting job in her life, just as she wanted it. Her fear was that it would take away valuable time and energy from her true passion — writing poetry.
As she explained in an interview:
I was very careful never to take an interesting job. I took lots of jobs. But if you have an interesting job you get interested in it… Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there’s no reason why they can’t get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day – which is what I did.
I am not a full proponent of her idea. If you spend eight or more hours a day at a job, it helps to have at least some interest in what you do. Still, Oliver makes a good point: There is no reason not to allocate more effort to the things that give us joy and less to the things that don’t. It may sound trite. But honestly think about how well you do this? I know I could do much better.
“Before The Leaves Fall From The Trees”
.“Before The Leaves Fall From The Trees”
Notes From the Field By Simon Black
October 26, 2020 Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico
The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day.
It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers. At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out.
Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next THREE DECADES would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction.
And then it happened.
The First Law of a Plan B
.The First Law of a Plan B
Notes From The Field By Simon Black
October 19, 2020 Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico
In the summer of 1687, after years of study and reflection, the legendary English scientist Isaac Newton published one of the most important works in the history of the world. He called it Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and the insights Newton wrote about shaped the very world we live in today. Literally *nothing* in modern engineering, from iPhones to skyscrapers, would exist today without Newton and his three-volume treatise.
Among the many game-changing concepts he discussed were his now famous Laws of Motion. Newton’s first law of motion, for example, is often summarized as something like “an object at rest stays at rest, unless acted upon by an external force.” Makes sense. A rock isn’t going anywhere unless someone picks it up and throws it.
And this is true not only of objects in our universe, but of human behavior as well.
Nearly Half Of All Professional Women Make This Money Mistake
.Nearly Half Of All Professional Women Make This Money Mistake — And It’s Easy To Fix
By CD Moriarty Oct. 7, 2020
How to stop deferring to a partner on financial matters
More than one married female friend has confided in me she leaves the “money stuff” to her husband. My professional self shakes her head — these women are giving their financial power away, jeopardizing their retirement and making themselves ill-prepared for the realities of daily life without a partner. Unfortunately, these friends are not alone; among well-educated professional women almost half defer to their partners on financial decisions. This is true across ages and professions, even 29% of those in financial services do this, according to a recent UBS study.
Though many enter marriage with the intention of sharing financial responsibility, they change course once married. This is true even for millennials, who defer to their spouses even more than Boomers (54% vs. 39%, according to the study). This issue goes beyond men and women, as 41% of women in same-sex relationships defer financial responsibility to their partner.
Money Matters
.Money Matters
By Jonathan Clements
We make countless decisions—financial and otherwise—with little or no thought to the dollars at stake:
We purchase items that we know are overpriced and almost guaranteed to lose value, but we do so happily, because they have a meaning for us that’s far greater than their price tag. Think of artwork and vacation souvenirs that are purchased because they remind us of moments we treasure.
We prize family possessions for their sentimental value, even though they typically have scant financial worth. Indeed, after a family member dies, often the biggest squabbles are over possessions with no resale value. We spend endless dollars on our family, while rarely—if ever—asking whether we’re wasting money.
None of this is especially surprising or, I’d argue, irrational. We’re talking about the pursuit of happiness—and that involves making choices where we receive greater value than the dollars we’re forking over.
Instead, what’s surprising is this: When that emotional resonance isn’t there, we typically default to money as the yardstick for measuring someone or some thing’s worth.