You scroll through your e-mail inbox in disgust. Once again, it’s full of spam. Lately, it seems, you’re getting so many of these fake e-mail messages that you can barely find the few real ones. Unwanted commercial email, messages, and robocalls – better known as spam – is a nuisance at best. At worst, it’s a way to
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Every day you make financial decisions. Some are minor, like buying a new outfit. Others are major, like deciding to start a new job. But all of them, large and small, can have an impact on your future. The problem is that you can’t always tell how your decisions will affect you in the long run. It’s only
Most of us could do with a little more money at the end of the month. Unfortunately, it’s hard to figure out how to squeeze savings out of a tight budget. If you read finance articles online, you hear about all kinds of saving strategies, from packing your own lunch to freezing all spending for a month. But how
Close your eyes for a minute and picture yourself at the age of 90, looking back on your life – and, in particular, your financial choices. Which decisions do you think you’ll be happiest about? Which ones do you think you’ll regret? Those are the very questions that Claris Finance asked 2,000 people in a 2016 poll. The
Let’s say you make a smoothie for breakfast. You load the blender with fruit and yogurt, press the “blend” button, and…nothing happens. Broken appliances can be a real drag and are especially common in old homes. What do you do next? You could try to get it repaired, but you’re not even sure where to find
Do you use credit cards regularly? Perhaps you have a favorite cash back rewards credit card that offers a small but meaningful return on every dollar you spend. Or maybe you use a travel rewards credit card to earn points or miles that can be redeemed for free or reduced-cost flights, hotel stays, or car
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
Walk into any big-box store, pick up an item at random off the shelf, and look at the label. Chances are you’ll see the same three words on the tag: “Made in China.” Depending on the product, it might read “Made in Mexico” or “Made in Taiwan” – but it almost certainly won’t say “Made in the
Back when I was little, new parents had just one choice to make about diapers. They could use plain white cotton diapers, secured with safety pins and covered in plastic pants to protect against leaks, or they could use bulky, expensive disposable diapers. Cloth diapers were undeniably cheaper, but they were also a lot more work, and for working
For every minor household dilemma, it seems like there are numerous expensive products offering a solution. Perhaps you’ve been invaded by ants or fruit flies, or maybe all the stuffing has bunched up in your favorite comforter. Maybe you’re sick of throwing away perfectly good sliced apples that turned brown after being exposed to the
Sometimes it appears that everything just keeps getting more and more expensive. That’s certainly the impression you’d get from reading the news – every time you open the paper, it seems, there’s another story about how to cope with the rising costs of food, education, or healthcare. But if you dig deeper, you can actually
Imagine that one night your house catches fire. You and your family escape unharmed, but by the time the fire is extinguished, there’s hardly anything left of the house or its contents. Once you recover from your shock, you call your home insurance company to file a claim. The company tells you that in order to