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CEO & Co-founder
Andrew started his career at a Chicago hedge fund and quickly noticed a problem: the people who most needed financial guidance weren’t getting any. He co-founded Money Crashers in 2009 to fix that with free, plain-language money education. He’s been interviewed by MSNBC, CBS News, NBC News, and Fox News, and featured in Forbes and US News & World Report. Off the clock he plays ice hockey and tennis, and meditates. Andrew holds a bachelor’s in economics from Brown University.
Flexible credit card points can usually move into an airline’s frequent flyer program at one point per mile. There, the same flight often costs far fewer points than in your card’s travel portal, plus taxes and fees in cash. Find the seat on the airline’s site first, then transfer only what the booking needs, since transfers are final.
Your card issuer usually reports the balance on your statement closing date to the credit bureaus, so a card you pay in full every month can still show a big balance. Pay most of it a few days before the statement closes, and your credit report shows a fraction of what you spent.
Choose an Upstart personal loan if your credit history is thin but your income and job are steady, because Upstart weighs both alongside your score. If your credit is already strong, check a no-fee lender first, since an Upstart offer can include an origination fee that comes out of your loan.
Pass on the cheap shares of a company in bankruptcy, however heavily they trade. Shareholders are paid last, after lenders, bondholders, suppliers, and employees, and the reorganization plan usually cancels the old stock. If a company you own files for Chapter 11, count your shares as a likely total loss.
Extra student loan payments only speed up your payoff if your regular payments keep coming too. By default, many servicers count the extra toward your next bill, so your due date gets pushed back or the amount due shrinks. Tell your servicer to put extra toward principal on your highest-rate loan instead.
Your adult child has decades of paychecks ahead to pay down their debt, while you have far fewer working years left to rebuild the retirement savings a payoff would spend. Before you clear their balance, make sure your emergency fund is full and your retirement is on track.
Rich celebrities go broke when the houses, cars, and staff they took on in their best years keep costing money after the big paydays stop. If your income swings, set your budget by a lean year’s pay instead, and send anything above it to savings or one-time spending.
If your employer offers an employee stock purchase plan (ESPP), enroll and sell each batch of shares as soon as your plan allows. With the usual 15% discount, every $85 you put in buys $100 of stock, a 17.6% gain before taxes, and none of your savings stays tied to the company that already pays you.
Before you fill a prescription, check its price on a free discount-card app and ask the pharmacist to run your insurance price too. The card price is sometimes lower than your copay and often differs between nearby pharmacies. Pay the lower one, unless you’ll likely reach your deductible this year, since card purchases usually don’t count toward it.
You can toss most tax paperwork once a return is three years old, because the IRS’s usual window to question it has closed. Some states take longer than the IRS, so check yours. Keep the records that set the tax on what you still own, like a home or investments, until three years after you report the sale.
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