I love Money Smart Week! As Karen Chan mentioned in her blog post on March 12th, Money Smart Week is the best time of year

Summertime! It's a wonderful time of year to slow down and relax after a busy school year of homework, events, and bustling to be on time. Summer is also a chance for children to practice life skills including money management. Activities and conversations that involve our daily lives can help make...

What do young people do? They move: from home to college dorm, from one apartment to the next apartment, to the summer job, home again, to the next rental duplex, and so it goes! And in the process, stuff accumulates and stuff gets lost. One of the best financial tools I ever gave my sons is a...

People invest a lot of amount of time, energy and money to earn a college degree. The financial cost of attending college is much larger today than it was a generation ago. It's reasonable to ask, "Is it still worth it to get a college degree?" Recent reports from Pew Research Center's Social and...

I have been pushing people to get a current copy of their credit bureau report on a regular basis for a while now. It is a good way to have a snapshot of your credit accounts and payment history and a method to catch identity theft before it gets totally out of hand. To do this you should get a...

It's a scary to think of someone stealing our money. When we hear about millions of accounts being hacked, we wonder "What can we do to protect our identity and our money?" 1) Look at your financial account statements frequently and report anything that looks odd...

Many of us may have heard of the importance of having an emergency fund, but the value it can bring to our lives is often severely understated. Just recently my fiancé and I finalized saving for our very own emergency fund. Less than a week later we realized just how invaluable having a financial...

Spring is often when we start thinking about remodeling projects or buying a new home. Right now interest rates on home equity loans and mortgages are relatively low. If you are thinking about taking out a home loan, you need to be smart about choosing the loan. The Federal Trade Commission...

You retired. Or changed jobs – maybe several times. So did I. And at many of those jobs, we had a 401(k) or some other type of retirement plan. If your account held less than $5000, you may have been forced to make a quick decision about what to do with the money. Otherwise, you probably did what...

A short while back I wrote about a co-worker's quest to pay off their credit card debts (a very worthwhile goal) and how she characterized it as being the "year of suck" because of all the sacrifices they were having to make not using as well as paying down their cards. Several of you wrote with...

Recently the Consumer Economics Team of Educators were discussing the Go Banking Rates Financial Tip Summer Challenge. They wanted to be apart of the contest but were unsure of what...

Last month, Americans were dismayed to learn that one of the biggest retailers, Target, had their computers hacked and the financial information of millions of customers was at risk for fraud. According to official releases from www.Target.com , payment cards (...

Diversification is the first rule of investing. You knew that, right? But have you thought about tax diversification? Yep. Smart investing isn't just what you own, it's where you own it and how it gets taxed when you take it out. From a tax standpoint, you have three different types of accounts:...

Do you have door weatherstripping that has been chewed off by a puppy? Do you have windows that don't seal completely? Perhaps you have holes going from the outside to the inside of your house from old pipes or wiring? If so, money is slipping out of your house! According to the U.S. Department of...

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about creating a 2014 Financial Goal and I challenged our readers to write and share their goals with us. At the time of the posting, I deliber

It's happened to every one of us. Whether they were calling for you, your spouse or your neighbor down the street, we've all encountered the dreaded call from a debt collector. In a former life, I was a debt collector. Here are a few tips and tricks of the trade on how to deal with one if you ever...

The New Year often brings a feeling of renewal and rejuvenation. Most of us talk or even write down our resolutions such as "I want to lose 20 pounds" or "I want to eat healthier." But this year I want to challenge our readers to make a financial goal for 2014. Below are some tips to help you get...

Last month I wrote about Vacation Getaways and one of the options that I discussed was the concept of a "Staycation." So, what is a "Staycation?" A "Staycation" is a vacation in whi

Money is more than dollars and cents. We choose how we manage our money based on our personal values. Values help define who we are and what we do. During the holiday season our values about money are highlighted: how much do we spend on treats; do we use credit; do we give to charities? Many of us...