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Cut one fixed bill before you fight another daily purchase. Lowering your rent, car insurance, or phone plan by $100 a month saves $1,200 a year with no further effort, so list your recurring costs from largest to smallest and shop, renegotiate, or restructure the biggest ones first.
Open Stash only if you’ll use its 3% IRA match or its Stock-Back card enough to cover the $108 annual fee, which takes about $300 a month into a self-directed IRA or $900 a month on the card. A managed IRA also charges 0.25% of its balance a year. Otherwise, Fidelity offers fractional shares and a no-fee IRA.
Use the Stash Stock-Back card if you already pay for the Stash Plan, but don’t subscribe just to get it. The 1% back in stock applies only to your first $1,000 of purchases each month, so it pays at most $120 a year, less than the plan’s $144 cost when billed monthly.
School costs for children are one of the most significant expenses for many middle-class families. Some parents pay thousands of dollars each year to send their kids to private schools, while others spend thousands in mortgage costs to buy homes…
There are some jobs in life that you can DIY and others that you leave to the pros. While you can handle simple tasks like paying your bills, what about doing your taxes, forming a business, or making a will?…
Whether you have questions about investing, taxes, retirement planning, or budgeting, there are professionals who’ve made it their life’s work to provide the assistance you need. One professional who covers all of those areas is a financial advisor. We’ve compiled a list…
Over long stretches, most actively managed stock funds lag their index after fees, and the few that win rarely keep winning, so you can’t pick them ahead of time. Put your stock money in a broad index fund that charges 0.10% a year or less, and hold it through the down years.
The standard deduction is the default, not automatically the better deal. Before you file, total your mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable gifts, and medical bills beyond 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. If that sum tops the standard deduction for your filing status, itemize.
Keeping a secret card, loan, or account from your partner breaks trust, and in a shared financial life the cost lands on both of you. Swap credit reports and a full list of accounts and debts with your partner, then agree on a spending limit above which either of you checks in first.
A solo 401k lets a self-employed person with no employees contribute twice, once as the employee and once as the employer, for a combined cap nearly 10 times the IRA limit. If your business earns more than you can shelter in an IRA, open one and fund the employee side first.
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