One of the keys to a sound financial strategy is spending less than you take in, and then finding a way to put your excess to work. A money management approach involves creating budgets to understand and make decisions about where your money is going. It also involves knowing where you may be able to put your excess cash to work.
American households with credit card balances carry an average debt of $16,425.¹ The wise use of credit is a critical skill in today’s world. Used unwisely, credit can rapidly turn from a useful tool to a crippling burden. There are…
Your credit score is simply a statistical estimation of how likely you are to pay your debts and, by extension, how much credit you should have. Everyone is different—everyone has a different history, different experiences. But have you ever wondered…
The U.S. personal saving rate stood at 3.7% in January of 2017, a bit lower than its 10-year average of 5.5% and well below the recent five-year high of 11% in December 2012.1 The personal saving rate is the federal…
The average $20 bill is in circulation for 7.9 years, according to a report by the Federal Reserve. That’s better than the $10 bill, which has a life span of only 4.5 years, but worse than the $100 bill, which…
Each month you settle down to pay bills. You pay your mortgage lender. You pay the electric company. You pay the trash collector. But do you pay yourself? One of the most basic tenets of sound investing involves the simple…
