7 Key Home-Buying Numbers to Know

7 Key Home-Buying Numbers to Know
Shopping for a House? Here are 7 Key Home-Buying Numbers to Know

by Larissa Runkle  Contributor  JANUARY 25, 2021

There’s a lot that goes into buying a new home, starting with finding the right one all the way down to finalizing the paperwork. Somewhere in that process, you’ll likely find yourself trying to decipher myriad new terms and figuring out what they mean for you.

We’ve compiled this list of seven key numbers you’ll need to know when buying a home — plus the details on how understanding these terms can help you land your dream home

Here are seven all-important home-buying numbers to know.

1. Cost per Square Foot

One of the first numbers you’ll encounter when shopping for homes is cost per square foot. While this number is based on a relatively simple calculation, it’s an important one to understand since ultimately it helps you determine how much house you’re getting for your money.

“Cost per square foot is simply the list price divided by the number of livable square feet,” said Tyler Forte, founder & CEO of Felix Homes. “This number is important because it allows a homeowner to compare the relative price of homes that are different sizes.”

But there’s more to consider, he said. “While cost per square foot is an important metric, you should also consider the layout of the home. In many cases, a home with an open floor-plan may seem larger even if it has a smaller livable square footage.”

Forte defines livable square footage as any interior space that’s heated and cooled, which is why a garage wouldn’t necessarily fit the bill. One of the best ways to understand how much home you can afford is to break it down by cost per square foot, which will vary from city to city and neighborhood to neighborhood.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:
https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/home-buying/home-buying-numbers-to-know/?aff_sub2=homepage

50 Ways You’re Throwing Money Away

50 Ways You’re Throwing Money Away

Sabah Karimi  Updated Tue, February 2, 2021,

You probably don’t realize all the ways you’re wasting money and leaving free money on the table — and these little missteps can add up to big dollar losses. Fortunately, once you’re aware of these bad money behaviors, you can take steps to change them. Making small tweaks to your lifestyle and spending habits could pay off in a big way.

Keep reading to find out the costly money mistakes you’re making — and how to stop making them so you can keep more money in your wallet.

Throwing Money Away on Layaway

While layaway might seem like a sensible way to hold onto something you want to buy, it’s not always a smart way to net savings. That’s because layaway locks you into a certain price and — if ultimately financed by a credit card — additional interest charges.

Not Using a High-Interest Savings Account

Having a high-interest savings account can help you grow your money and build an emergency fund more quickly than with a traditional bank account — so if you don’t have one, you’re leaving free money on the table.

The average savings account interest rate is 0.09%, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., but high-interest savings accounts can offer rates that are much higher — easily reaching over 1.00%, which is quite a difference compared to the average rate.

Trying To Time the Stock Market

When stocks are on the rise, it’s tempting to think you’re smart enough to know when to get in and out to make a killing. But this move is one of the worst mistakes rookie investors make.

Experts say it’s nearly impossible to do this correctly every single time. After all, you need to be right twice — when you get out of the market and when you get back in.

Ignoring Refurbished Goods

 It’s easy to dismiss refurbished electronics as rejects or factory failures. 

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/50-ways-throwing-money-away-010000053.html

What To Do If You’ve Depleted Your Savings Over the Last Year

What To Do If You’ve Depleted Your Savings Over the Last Year 

Gabrielle Olya   February 1, 2021,

The coronavirus pandemic has led to millions of Americans losing their jobs, and oftentimes, unemployment income alone just isn’t enough to make ends meet. As a result, some Americans may have depleted all of their savings to make it through 2020.

A survey conducted by CNBC+ and Acorns last September found that 14% of Americans — up to 46 million people — had wiped out their emergency savings since the start of the pandemic. And a survey conducted by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies last May found that 15% of Americans had already dipped into their retirement accounts to cover living expenses, and an additional 13% planned to do so.

If you’re one of the millions of people who now need to rebuild their savings from scratch — while making ends meet in the short term without piling on debt — you may not know where to begin. Here’s what financial experts say you should do.

Build a Basic Budget

If you’re struggling to make ends meet right now, you may not have anything left over to contribute to savings. But you need to have a clear picture of your financial circumstances before you can make any moves to improve them.

“In the short term, take a look at what you have coming in, what’s going out and what’s left over,” said Andrew Meadows, senior vice president at Ubiquity Retirement + Savings. “Those are the three basic questions for building a budget. By not spending more than you have, you won’t be piling on to the debt.”

If you lost a job and are newly employed, you need to review your budget based on your new income.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ve-depleted-savings-over-last-220004476.html

The Financial Advice Your Parents Gave You is… Outdated.

The Financial Advice Your Parents Gave You is… Outdated. Here’s What to Do Instead

by Mike Brassfield  Senior Writer

Pound the pavement. Just go and deliver your resume in person. Get out there and shake some hands, why don’t ya!   We’ve all heard these financial pearls of wisdom from our parents (and not always because we asked). Despite their best intentions, a lot of these tips from our elders are, well… outdated. To say the least.

Here are six pieces of advice from our parents that simply don’t apply to us anymore — and some smarter options.

1. Work Your Way Through College

Working your way through college used to be an option — back when tuition cost a reasonable amount. That was a long time ago, though.  Most colleges’ tuitions have easily doubled or tripled since the 1980s and ’90s. Working a job while you attend college can help pay the bills, but it won’t pay for college. That’s why so many of us are saddled with student loans.

Once you graduate, refinancing could help you pay off your loans faster and save money in the long run. By combining multiple loans into one, you’ll replace your federal and private loans with a single private loan. In addition to simplifying the repayment process, refinancing can reduce your interest rate and lower your monthly payments.

2. Keep Your Money in a Savings Account

This is standard parental advice: Open a savings account. That’s the best way to save money.  Yeah, OK, fine. The problem is, with interest rates so low, a savings account these days will pay you pretty much zero interest. You may as well stick some cash under your mattress. However, a debit card and digital account called Aspiration lets you earn up to 5% cash back and up to 16 times the average interest on the money in your account.

Not too shabby! You just have to get with the times and move beyond using a brick-and-mortar bank.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/bank-accounts/outdated-advice/?aff_sub2=homepage

Five Ways To Loosen Big Tech’s Grip On Your Life

Five Ways To Loosen Big Tech’s Grip On Your Life

Notes From The Field By Simon Black

January 25, 2021  Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

I imagine there are countless people right now who feel a wide range of emotions when it comes to Big Tech companies. Anger. Disgust. Confusion. Fear.  We’ve watched with exasperation as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. have systematically squashed intellectual dissent; their actions have been so commonplace that there’s even a name for it: “De-platforming”.  We all know there’s a ton of garbage on the Internet, including from mainstream sources.

But de-platforming has proven to be wholeheartedly biased, totally arbitrary, and often comically ridiculous. This isn’t just about the election or the Capitol. For example, if you dare utter a word on social media that goes against the infinite and infallible wisdom of the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization, then you might find yourself banned. 

YouTube even suspended a renowned epidemiologist– a bona fide pandemic expert– because he opposed lockdowns and was hence ‘dangerous’.

Facebook censored more than 22 million posts in Q2 of 2020 for ‘hate speech’. Naturally, its entirely up to Facebook to define hate speech and judge whether or not you’re using it.

#killallmen, for example, is NOT considered hate speech. And even by the company’s own admission, hate speech against men, or white people, is a low priority.

It’s clear these companies have an enormous amount of unchecked power. They have the ability to erase you from the Internet, destroy your reputation, and, if you’re someone who makes money online, terminate your livelihood.

But the only reason they have this power is because we’ve given it to them. Hundreds of millions of people have intertwined their entire lives into the Big Tech ecosystem, to the point that they know absolutely everything about us.

People post practically every detail of their lives on Instagram. They tell Zuckerberg what they like and dislike on their Facebook profiles. They tell Jack Dorsey what they believe in on their Twitter feeds.

They give Google free license to spy on every single email that’s sent or received; Google even keeps track of the things that you buy, archiving receipts from online purchases in your inbox and aggregating all of it into your advertising profile.

Through its Maps, Drive, and Calendar applications, Google has access to our schedule, our location, and our confidential files.

They know what we’re searching for. They know what we’re saying. They know what we’re doing.

And at a certain point, a rational human being might be compelled to say “enough is enough”. How can anyone possibly trust these people with their data anymore?

The good news is that there are tons of solutions.

In fact, distancing yourself from the Big Tech companies is one of the easiest ways you can declare your own independence and regain a bit of freedom and security. Below I outline a few options to consider:

1. Absolutely use a VPN

Your device, whether your mobile phone, laptop, or even smart TV, has an IP address, and it’s something that the tech companies use to track you.

Whenever you go to Google’s homepage to search for something, for example, Google already knows it’s you.

And many websites around the Internet will track you by IP address, often sharing this information with Google, Facebook, etc.

Using a VPN helps create anonymity online because you’re no longer accessing those websites from your own IP address.

Right now, for example, even though I’m sitting at home in Puerto Rico, I’m using a VPN service and accessing the Internet through a server in Panama. So any website I visit thinks that I’m in Panama.

There are several VPN providers which, as a policy, do NOT keep logs of their customers’ activities, including VyprVPN and NordVPN.

2) Change your search engine

There’s more to the world than Google search, and plenty of other search engines exist which won’t spy on you. Among them– DuckDuckGo, which is based in the United States, and SwissCows, which is based in Switzerland.

3) Change your web browser

If you use Google Chrome, chances are pretty good that your browser is constantly feeding data back to the mother ship. Everywhere you go on the Internet, Chrome is telling Google about it.

But there are plenty of other browsers out there which are far more privacy oriented. “Brave” is one such browser; it’s open-source, which means that its source code is freely available. And it is automatically set up to block trackers and ads to help protect your privacy.

If you do those three things: VPN, change your search engine, and change your browser, you will take a giant leap forward in distancing yourself from Big Tech.

Those three steps will make it much more difficult for Facebook and Google to track you. But here are a few more to consider:

4) Consider more privacy-oriented chat applications

In a couple of weeks, WhatsApp (which is owned by Facebook) will force all users to accept its new privacy policy. Among other things, this means that ALL of your contacts will be shared with Zuckerberg.

There are better options– like Signal. Signal is ultra-secure, built for privacy, and its source code is open source. There are versions for iOS, Android, PC, Mac, and Linux.

5) Ditch Gmail

You might think that Gmail is free, but you’re paying for it with your personal data.

Google’s algorithms automatically scan every incoming email and mine data about you, all of which ends up in your advertising profile.

There are plenty of other services to use, free and paid. If you’re interested in encryption and security, you might consider Switzerland-based ProtonMail, or Iceland-based CTemplar.

There are endless possibilities to reduce Big Tech influence in your life, and these suggestions barely scratch the surface.

More advanced readers might ditch their operating system altogether for an open-source Linux distribution, or even load a custom ROM on their phone to replace Google’s Android.

For now, start small. These suggestions above are easy steps to get started, and they’ll make a huge difference.

On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years.

That's why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

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​Why gold is the ultimate anti-currency and insurance policy against the systematic destruction of the US dollar (that everyone should at least consider owning)

​Why ETFs are a lurking timebomb and why you want to avoid them like the plague

​And everything else you need to know about buying, owning, storing and investing in precious metals

​This 50-page report is brand new and absolutely free.   Download For Free

To your freedom,  Simon Black, Founder, SovereignMan.com

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/five-ways-to-loosen-big-techs-grip-on-your-life-30556/ 

“This is a financial revolution. . .”

“This is a financial revolution. . .”

Notes From The Field By Simon Black

January 28, 2021  Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

At precisely 2:32pm Eastern time on May 6, 2010, the US stock market started to drop.

The decline was sudden, and vicious. Within minutes, more than $1 trillion of market capitalization had vanished, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing nearly 10% of its value.

This event became known as the ‘Flash Crash’. And early explanations pointed to the big investment banks and their high-tech trading algorithms, i.e. software that could buy and sell stocks without human involvement.

When the market started its decline that day, banks’ trading algorithms went haywire and started selling everything. This caused the market to decline even further, which triggered the algorithms to sell even more.

The humans were powerless to stop it. There were stories of panicked tech teams at investment banks frantically ripping cables out of the floor trying to shut down the machines.

But the selling went on for 36 minutes… during which time the banks and big funds racked up enormous losses.

For me, however, the Flash Crash was great. I was ‘short’ the stock market at the time, meaning I had bet that the market would decline.

And when the market dropped by more than 1,000 points, I happily cashed in.

But two days later I received an email from my broker explaining that they were CANCELING my trade.

The poor little investment banks had lost money because their fancy algorithms didn’t work. So the exchange was giving them a ‘do over’ at my expense.

Incredible. It hadn’t even been two years at that point since the banks had to be bailed out at taxpayer expense during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

Then, 20 months later, the Flash Crash happened. And the banks were simply able to wipe all their losses away.

The lesson is obvious: when we screw up, we pay the price for our mistakes. But when the banks screw up, the whole financial system comes to their rescue.

Plenty of people have made this realization over the years.

If you’ve been following the news, you are probably aware that there are a few stocks right now-- most notably GameStop (GME), that have soared to incredible heights in a matter of days, thanks to a zealous group of individual investors on Reddit and TikTok.

These aren’t titans of finance; they’re a bunch of little guys, many of whom are also frustrated by the rigged financial system.

A bit of background-- GameStop is a company that sells video games. And, for years, almost all of their sales have been from their 5500+ stores around the world.

That business model worked really well… in 2005.

Today, most users download video games online directly from the publishers, or they stream games from Google, Amazon, Apple, or Steam. Going into a store and buying a DVD is a thing of the past, and GameStop’s sales have suffered as a result of this trend.

A handful of hedge funds have been betting that GameStop will go out of business soon, or at least that the stock price will continue to decline.

So these funds shorted the stock in a huge (and dubious) way, selling more shares of the company than were actually in existence.

And a number of small investors saw these questionable short positions and said, ‘Enough is enough. We’re tired of hedge funds exploiting the market.’ So they’ve banded together and bid up the price of GameStop’s stock to absolutely epic levels.

GME’s stock price is up from $17 earlier this month, to $347 at yesterday’s close, all from these small investors.

And as a result, the hedge funds who shorted GameStop have extreme losses.

Individual investors are angry; comments on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets really sum this up:

“Hedge Funds have literally taken lives through their greed. It’s time for some long overdue taste of their own medicine.”

and

“It’s a class war. It’s time we fought back.”

and

“[Hedge funds: ] This is personal for me, and millions of others. . . I’m making this as painful as I can for you.”

and

“There is and has been a ruling class whose sole purpose is to retain power. They gaslight us into thinking they know what is best for us. 1% knows better than 99%. This is not [about] stocks, this is a financial revolution. . .”

And they’re right. Small investors have been fleeced for years. It’s infuriating. People are angry.

And as we saw over and over again throughout 2020, when people become angry enough, they band together, often in loosely organized mobs, and take action.

Oftentimes that action is destructive (or self-destructive), and even irrational.

We watched people burn buildings in the name of combating discrimination, others descend upon the US Capitol, others destroy people’s lives via Twitter, and yet others assaulting their fellow citizens who weren’t wearing masks.

That’s human nature: we do strange things when we’re angry. But it makes us feel better.

GameStop is similar. The business loses tons of money, lost half of its equity last year, and has a net asset value of just $690 million. Yet at yesterday’s close the company was worth $20+ billion.

(So GameStop’s ‘Price/Book’ ratio was roughly 30, while the average Price/Book in the S&P500 is 4.16.)

GameStop is a completely irrational investment. And sure enough, the price has been hammered this morning after the brokerage app Robinhood suspended GME trading.

But as the Reddit users say, it’s not about the money. It’s personal. It’s emotional. They’re knowingly engaging in destructive (and self-destructive) behavior. They’re OK losing money-- because they’re angry.

This is a sign of the times.

We saw explosive mob anger last year over social issues, political issues, health issues. Now we’re seeing it in the financial system.

The obvious theme here is that people are seriously angry. And it’s not going away. It’s building.

Personally I think a better strategy is to borrow from the 1983 movie War Games: “The only winning move is not to play.”

We have an incredible amount of options at our disposal. Just like I wrote recently about divorcing oneself from Big Tech, no one has to use gmail; you don’t have to play Google’s game.

There are plenty of other secure, cloud-based email services. Same goes for Google Drive, Google search, etc.

Similarly, we have plenty of options when it comes to our investments.

If you think the stock market is rigged, you don’t have to play. Consider alternative investments instead-- gold, real estate, private companies, crypto, etc. It may be more productive to NOT play the game rather than take huge risks to fight the system.

Either way, expect the anger to continue building. (Just imagine the fury if inflation starts to rise...)

And this is reason enough to have a Plan B.

To your freedom,  Simon Black, Founder, SovereignMan.com

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/this-is-a-financial-revolution-30629/

How To Start A Nonprofit Organization

How To Start A Nonprofit Organization

Posted on January 12, 2021 by fritz@theretirementmanifesto.com

A few years ago, my wife asked how to start a nonprofit organization.  Recently retired, she wanted to “give back” to society.  She wanted to start a charity.  She’s not alone.

Many retirees find that retirement is a great time to give back.  Many have considered starting a charity.  If you’re thinking about ways you can truly make an impact, this post is for you.  Today, we’ll answer the question of How To Start A Nonprofit Organization, with a 10 Step Overview of how to create a 501c3 corporation.

Fortunately, my wife and I figured out the steps. She’s now fully engaged in running Freedom For Fido (“FFF”), the legally incorporated 501c3 nonprofit organization (NPO) she founded in 2019.  The impact she’s had on our local community has exceeded her wildest expectations, and she’s found a true Purpose for her retired years. We answered the question of “How to start a nonprofit organization”, and we learned some things along the way. Today, we share our learnings with you.

Below are the 10 specific steps we followed, using actual examples from our experience.

10 Steps To Start Your Own Charity

1. Identify Your Cause

The Purpose of Freedom For Fido?  “Freeing Dogs From Life On A Chain.”  A short 7-word sentence that captures what my wife’s NPO is all about. Through the generous support of our donors, we build free fences for low-income families in our area.  For those dogs who’ve lived “24/7” on a chain, we also provide a free doghouse. We have over 50 volunteers who willingly serve on our “Fence Building Days”, and we have a great time helping those in need.

What’s Your Cause?  Decide what area you want to impact, and how your NPO can make a difference. What do you want your focus to be?  What is your charity going to do? What needs are present in your community? How wil  you engage volunteers?  How will you reach potential recipients?  Spend a lot of time in this area.  It seems overwhelming at first glance, but this is the foundational question and the first step in How To Start A Nonprofit Organization.  Get it right.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.theretirementmanifesto.com/how-to-start-a-nonprofit-organization/

The Dave Ramsey 7 Baby Steps: Pros & Cons of His Method

The Dave Ramsey 7 Baby Steps: Pros & Cons of His Method

If you have been looking for financial advice, then you’ve probably come across the name Dave Ramsey and his 7 Baby Steps in your research.  Over the years, Dave has quickly become one of the most popular financial “gurus” in the space and has offered helpful advice to thousands of people. But there are plenty of people offering financial advice out there that it can be difficult to know who to trust and what methods are worth following. He can also be a fairly controversial figure, which has garnered him some flack about his workplace policies and methods. However, I’m not here to judge him on these aspects.

Instead, I’m exploring his 7 Baby Steps and if they are worth following to better your finances.

Who is Dave Ramsey?  Financial freedom guru, radio presenter, and businessman with a cult following; Ramsey specializes in helping individuals complete their own total money makeover.  He covers all aspects of personal finance; including credit cards, interest rates, student loans, Roth IRAs and daily budgeting. His unique emergency fund and “debt snowball” methods have garnered him a huge following around the globe.

After finding his family in a whole host of debt, Dave worked hard to pull them out and keep their books in the green. He began on Nashville radio in 1992, with a vision to counsel others into financial security.

Dave has since had his own tv show, “The Dave Ramsey Show” and filmed an acclaimed documentary called Maxed Out. It follows the predatory practices of the credit card industry.  The current net worth of Dave Ramsey sat at approximately $55 million+ in 2019. Other sites put his net worth up closer to $200 million!

What Are Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps About?

Before you begin your total money makeover, Dave Ramsey has set out 7 Baby Steps in order to specifically tackle different areas of your finances. The process helps build good money habits and enforce the discipline for many who haven’t previously been able to stick with it.

The 7 Baby Steps break your financial plan into manageable actions. And they’ll allow you to feel accomplished without being overwhelmed by the mountain of work to be done. 

What are the 7 baby steps of Dave Ramsey?

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://investedwallet.com/dave-ramsey-7-baby-steps/

How Do I Save Up an Emergency Fund?

How Do I Save Up an Emergency Fund?

My Two Cents Jan. 14, 2021  By Charlotte Cowles

I know I’m supposed to have an emergency fund, and I want to make that happen this year. However, I’m not really sure how to go about it. I feel like I can barely pay my bills as it is, and I’m still working my way through some credit-card debt that I built up when I first moved to New York in my early 20s (I’m now 27). I paid off about $5K of it last year, but I have about $4K left. I also have private student loans that I’m paying at the same time. How do I balance all of these? Should I even bother trying to save while I still have credit-card debt, or is it better to tackle things one at a time?

Emergency funds get a lot of fanfare. And rightfully so! You can’t argue with the fact that having some extra cash lying around is helpful when the world goes to hell. But the problem with emergency funds is that they are great in theory and very, very difficult to put into practice. And that’s why most people never get around to saving one — they’ve got more urgent financial demands than a hypothetical rainy day.

But it’s also important to learn how to multitask with your money, and toggle between competing short- and long-term priorities. I’m not saying it will be easy or quick, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Once you make a plan, you can (and should) put most of the process on autopilot — and then be patient.

First things first: Congratulations on paying down more than half of your credit-card debt. Sallie Krawcheck, the CEO of the financial advisory platform Ellevest, once told me that consumer debt was “poison” for your finances and you should treat it accordingly. With that in mind, I recommend rolling your remaining balance onto a zero-interest credit card (also known as a balance-transfer card), which will give you a limited time window where your debt won’t accrue interest and you can get rid of it even faster. Be strategic about making sure you can pay it off within that window, because once it’s closed, the interest rate will skyrocket again.

In the meantime, figure out how big your emergency fund should be. The best way to do that is by examining where your money currently goes. Compile your expenses from the past few months (print out your debit and credit card bills, look at your bank statements, etc.) and write them all down. Then you can see how much you absolutely need to support your basic needs — loan bills, groceries, rent, and so forth — and what you could cut if you had to. You can also try using a free budget template (Mint has one, and I like this spreadsheet from Girls Night In, too) to make sure you aren’t forgetting anything.

From there, calculate a bare-bones monthly budget that you could survive on if things got tight. Multiply that by three, and you’ve got the minimum amount for your emergency fund. This is your starting goal.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.thecut.com/article/how-do-i-save-up-an-emergency-fund.html

Americans' Biggest Money Blunders

Suze Orman Says These Are Americans' Biggest Money Blunders

Esther Trattner    Sat, January 23, 202

Best-selling personal finance author and TV personality Suze Orman has been inspiring Americans for decades to make better money moves and avoid serious financial mistakes. She's been as busy as ever in 2020, providing consumers with advice on how to weather the coronavirus crisis.  In times of hardship and prosperity, Orman will be the first to tell you that what you don't do with your money may be even more important than what you do with it.

Here are 34 of her most fundamental tips for avoiding financial blunders, so you can save more money and make it grow.

1. Don't be too quick to buy a home

Homeownership is part of the American dream, and today's historically low mortgage rates have made homebuying even more appealing. But it's not always the right choice.

"Sometimes it makes sense to own a home," Orman tells CNBC.com. "And sometimes, depending on where you live, it makes sense to simply rent."

If you're in an expensive city, Orman says why not invest in the stock market instead of pouring a lot of money into property? That way, you can grow your savings — maybe into a down payment on the home of your dreams.  A good way to get into investing is by using a popular stock trading app that doesn't charge commissions and allows you to buy fractions of shares with as little as $1.

2. Don't lease a car

In Suze Orman's words, "you should never, ever ever ever, lease a car."  If you lease, you'll sink your money into several years' worth of car payments and be empty-handed when the lease term is done.  Financing is a better option, but Orman says if it will take longer than three years to pay off the car, then it’s out of your price range.

Buying a used car is another way to go. Models that are just a few years old will have great safety specifications and the same audio-visual tech as a new car, at a fraction of the price.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/suze-orman-says-americans-biggest-190000626.html

Dave Ramsey Says These Are 10 Reasons You're Not Getting Ahead

Dave Ramsey Says These Are 10 Reasons You're Not Getting Ahead

Sarah Cunnane   January 21, 2021

Talk-radio host Dave Ramsey says you can solve your money troubles just as soon as you stop causing them. The money management guru has been doling 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 million-dollar fortune flipping houses 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 the author of several books. He teaches Americans how to save more money and avoid wallowing in debt — even during the current financial crisis.

Here are 10 reasons you're not getting ahead, according to Dave Ramsey.

1. Don’t try to tackle your biggest debts first

When you’re deep in debt with multiple loans, freeing yourself can seem impossible. That’s why Ramsey suggests the “debt snowball method.”

Rather than start with the loan with the highest interest rate, Ramsey says to pay off the loan with the lowest balance first, making only minimum payments on the rest. The idea is that each small victory inspires you to tackle bigger challenges.

“It’s more about behavior change than numbers. Once your income is freed up, you can finally use it to make progress toward your savings goals,” Ramsey explains on his website.

The snowball method is one of Ramsey's most common pieces of advice but it's also controversial. If your credit score is hurting, it may be better to use an online service that can help you determine which bills to pay off first to get your score back up.

2. Don’t try to justify frivolous purchases

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

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