Whether you’re purchasing a prefab dwelling, building a new construction home, or planning to fix up an older house, you’re probably excited about the prospect of closing the deal and moving in. Not so fast. Buying a home is an expensive proposition – the biggest investment that most families ever make. While you aren’t required to cover the
When you make a new acquaintance, often the first question you’re asked is, “What do you do for a living?” This line makes sense as an icebreaker because work occupies such a central place in our lives. If you work a standard 40-hour week, you’re devoting over 35% of your waking hours to your job
The term “financial independence” gets thrown around a lot in personal finance articles and blogs, and not everyone uses it the same way. To some people, financial independence simply means earning enough to pay your bills, so you don’t have to depend on help from your family or the government. To others, it means being
From 1998 to 2013, the number of Fortune 500 companies offering pensions to their employees fell from 60% to 24%, according to The Washington Post. With the decline of unionism and loss of employee bargaining power, corporate managements have aggressively replaced pensions with profit-sharing plans, essentially transferring the risk of retirement planning and investment management to
Country wisdom is the collection of practical experiences gained by generations of pioneers, farmers, and ranchers as America transformed from a vast frontier to the world’s greatest economy. That experience – the result of constant trial and error – was passed from parent to child in plain language that left no room for misinterpretation. Living
When you hear the phrase “wine cellar,” what pops into your mind? I picture a climate-controlled bunker attached to a gaudy beachfront mansion. Sure, wine collecting and investing is a popular hobby among the wealthy elite and has a certain snobbish connotation – but that’s not the whole story. In recent years, it has become
According to a 2013 Gallup Poll, more than half of working Americans expect to retire by age 65 or earlier. However, this expectation stands in stark contrast to their practical readiness for retirement. The 2013 Retirement Confidence Survey, performed by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and Matthew Greenwald & Associates, delivers the following unsettling statistics:
