Standard and Poor’s, Gallup, The World Bank and George Washington University created a short, 5-question personal finance assessment. 150,000 people in 140 countries then took the test last year. Want to know how many passed? The answer is just 33%. Only one-third of all participants were found to be proficient in at least 3 of… Read More
FAFSA CHANGE (AS REPORTED BY ZINA KUMOK ON BLOG.MINT.COM)
FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and is the primary way that most college students apply for tuition assistance. And next year, there is a big change that people need to be aware of. Instead of waiting until January 2017 to submit the paperwork for students beginning college in the fall, parents… Read More
CHECK YOUR 401K FEES (AS REPORTED BY JOHN COUMARIANOS ON FINANCE.YAHOO.COM)
Do you know how much you are paying in fees in your 401k plan? Most people don’t. If you’re lucky enough to be enrolled in a company-sponsored 401k retirement plan, you might want to ask how much the fees are. A recent study of plans from a number of different companies found that the average… Read More
AN APP TO STOP US FROM LYING TO OURSELVES ABOUT MONEY (AS REPORTED BY JENNY ANDERSON ON WWW.QZ.COM)
As humans, it is in our nature to lie to ourselves. We do it without thinking about it, really. And in the world of personal finances, it has become a problem. Instead of saving for the future, we spend money today on things we don’t need. And we do this because we underestimate how much… Read More
ALL ABOUT CREDIT SCORES (AS REPORTED BY TRENT HAMM ON WWW.THESIMPLEDOLLAR.COM)
Credit scores were invented as a means of helping financial institutions trust people they were making loans to. An individual with a high credit score is more likely to pay back a loan than someone with a low score. Credit scores are managed by third-party organizations, called credit bureaus. Scores go up and down based… Read More
HIGH EARNING POOR PEOPLE (AS REPORTED BY ALLISON SCHRAGER ON WWW.QZ.COM)
Many times you see and hear about how much people make. Most articles about inequality focus on ‘income inequality’. But income is not the only, or best, measure of how people are doing financially. Just focusing on income ignores wealth, how much money people actually have to their name. And it turns out America is… Read More
CO-SIGNER BEWARE (VIA CONSUMER REPORTS ON FINANCE.YAHOO.COM)
It is quite common today for student loans to be co-signed by parents and guardians of those students who are borrowing. In fact, almost 94% of all student loan dollars in the first three quarters of 2014-15 school year were co-signed. But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has some warnings for parents vouching for their… Read More
PAY OFF DEBT OR INVEST? (AS REPORTED BY WILLIAM COWIE ON WWW.GETRICHSLOWLY.ORG)
If you have debt to pay off, there will come a time when you need to answer the following question – pay off debt or invest? William Cowie, writing for Get Rich Slowly, identifies the reasons given for each of the two options. For investing, there is the power of compound interest and the time… Read More
THE RECESSION’S IMPACT ON RETIREMENT SAVINGS (AS REPORTED BY TERESA GHILARDUCCI ON WWW.THEATLANTIC.COM)
We tend not to think about the timing of market cycles when investing for retirement. We are told that, over the long term, the stock market is always up. And so, we trust that our 401ks and IRAs, invested heavily in stocks and bonds, will be large enough by the time we retire to last… Read More
THE YOUNG MAY NEVER FIND WORK (AS REPORTED BY ERIC LEVITZ ON WWW.NYMAG.COM)
The US unemployment rate is lower now than it’s been in nearly a decade. And that’s good news, for most of us. But if you just look at the top line number, you miss out on the full story. There are many communities that have not fully recovered, and may be in even worse position… Read More