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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.
Earning too much for grants is no reason to skip the FAFSA. The same form is your application for federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans, which have no income test, and some state and college merit scholarships require it too. File it every year, whatever your income.
Trading in a car you owe more on than it’s worth doesn’t erase the gap. Roll it into the next loan and you pay interest on a car you no longer own. Keep the one you have until you owe less than it’s worth, and extra payments toward the loan get you there sooner.
Private mortgage insurance protects your lender, not you, and stays on your bill until you ask to drop it or the lender’s schedule ends it. Once your balance reaches 80% of your home’s original value, ask your servicer in writing to cancel it. If your home has gained value, ask whether a new appraisal can end it sooner.
A college’s sticker price alone can’t tell you what your family will pay. The number that matters is net price, the cost after the grants and scholarships a school offers your student. Run each school’s net price calculator before you apply, and count only free money when offers arrive.
Lifestyle creep quietly turns each raise into higher spending, and once you’ve lived on that money, saving it feels like a pay cut. Beat it before the first bigger paycheck arrives by sending half the raise to your 401k or savings automatically. Spend the other half guilt-free.
Money left in your health care flexible spending account (FSA) after the plan’s deadline is lost, so look up the date now. Some plans add a grace period or a small carryover, and some offer neither. Then spend the balance on care and supplies you’d pay for anyway, such as an eye exam or new glasses.
Two-factor authentication means a stolen password alone is no longer enough to get into your accounts. Turn it on for your email and every bank, card, investment, and payment account. At a few minutes each, ten accounts take about 30 minutes. Pick an authenticator app over text codes wherever a site offers both.
A small home insurance claim can raise your premium for years and cost you a claims-free discount. Before you file for minor damage, subtract your deductible from a repair estimate and compare what’s left with the extra premiums you’d pay. If the premiums come out higher than what’s left, pay for the repair yourself.
When a card terminal, ATM, or foreign website offers to charge you in U.S. dollars, decline and pay in the local currency. Saying yes lets the merchant or ATM operator set the exchange rate, and its markup routinely adds several percent to what your own card would charge.
Your property tax bill is your home’s assessed value, less any exemptions, times a rate you can’t change, so the assessment is the number to fight. Pull your property record, check the square footage, bedrooms, and basement against your actual house, and appeal any error before the deadline on your assessment notice.
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