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Are you newly married, or about to be married? If so, congratulations! Now, we don’t want to worry you, but the first few weeks of your marriage will set a tone for the rest of your lives together. You want to start your married life off with smart, healthy habits! If your marriage is ever going to run into trouble down the road, the reason why will likely be…

If the time is now right for you to buy a house, whether due to a growing family or because you want your monthly payments to go into equity (and you want the mortgage interest deduction on you taxes), you will want to have the best credit scores possible. This will allow you to secure a mortgage on more favorable terms, including a t a lower interest rate. What…

When it comes down to the essentials, you can’t get much more essential that heat, water and light, and unless you live in Alaska or someplace similar, air conditioning in the summer. But while your utilities may be absolutely essential, the amount you pay on your utility bills is not. There are a number of ways to save money on your utilities, and here are a few of them.…

When it comes to our legal relationship with credit card issuers and consumer loan agencies, it may feel like these mammoth companies hold all the cards. But in fact, there is an alphabet soup’s worth of state and federal laws designed to protect consumers of credit, along with another catalog of government agencies to enforce those laws. So while it may feel like you don’t have any leverage in…

When it comes to being financially healthy, having an emergency fund is an essential component.  We all know how quickly life can throw a curveball at you and you need to be prepared for these “unexpected expenses”.  For this reason, financial professionals suggest saving at least six months worth of living expenses.   If you are living paycheck to paycheck, however, this idea may seem out of reach.  Even so, devising…

Even people who avoid debt will likely need to take out loans at some point. While it’s a good idea to keep student loans, which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, to a minimum, it will be hard to graduate at today’s tuition levels without taking on some, and if you get tired of renting, a mortgage will be out there waiting for you. The interest rates at which you…

Many of the obvious benefits that major corporations offer us are sometimes accompanied by fees that are not obvious at all. There are often hidden fees tucked away in the fine print of service contracts that only steely-eyed lawyers are likely to uncover. Because we realize that you would rather not surrender your free time to read the fine print and find these fees, that is what we have…

Unless you do a strict accounting of your income and expenses each month, it’s not easy to clearly determine whether you are living within your means and remaining solvent. And if you have a mortgage and unavoidable expenses such as child care, you may have a daunting monthly nut even if you are maintaining frugal spending habits. For busy people who are not accountants, and do not have the…

While consumers can be penalized by credit bureaus for an imperfect payment record on their medical debt, they will not be rewarded for good payment behavior.  Medical payments, like utility payments, do not show up on your credit history when timely made, and therefore do not operate to bolster your credit. Missed or late medical payments, however, will harm your credit rating. And because medical bills can grow quite…

The celebrated American novelist Ernest Hemingway went bankrupt once during his career. When he was asked how it happened, he said, “Slowly at first, and then quickly.” We all know of other celebrity bankruptcies, and if financial calamity can happen to them, it can certainly happen to us. As a result, we have decided to list the five worst financial blunders a person can make, in the hope that…