Managing Your Money

Allowing your children to use debit cards is a great way to teach them how to manage money as they approach adulthood. They can learn to make deposits and withdrawals, set aside money for savings, and plan their spending. What you don’t want is to have to pay fees. Thankfully, several banks offer debit cards […]

In what is probably the biggest data breach in the history of data breaches, National Public Data was hacked and a massive amount of personal data was taken. National Public Data is a personal data aggregator – they collect publicly available information about people and sell it to companies doing background checks, criminal checks, and

Joint budgeting doesn’t have to be stressful. Regardless of your strategy, the best budgeting apps can make managing your money less complicated, so you can spend more time building your relationship and enjoying life. When choosing a budgeting app, there are many different strategies to consider, such as zero-based budgeting, envelope budgeting, and values-based spending.

Will interest rates go down? Yes they will. The challenge is when will they start and what can we do to prepare? According to an article in Fortune, analyst at Citi Research believe the Fed “could slash rates by 200 points over 8 straight meetings.” That would be eight cuts of 25 basis points starting

In another life, I wrote process management software for large organizations in the government. These organizations had processes that “evolved” out of years of personal relationships and massive three-ring binders. (It wasn’t until that job that I learned Excel spreadsheets had limits to the rows and columns in a sheet!) The processes had become extremely

Just as having a good credit score is important to your personal financial picture, having a good business credit score is critical to running a successful business. An excellent business credit score makes it easier to obtain credit for the purpose of growing your business, financing the purchase of equipment, and managing daily operations. In

Many financial institutions check your credit history as a part of the account opening process. This can be problematic if you have bad credit. Depending on how severe your credit challenges are, you may be declined for a bank account. Thankfully, there is a growing number of banks that not only don’t check your credit

The best budgeting apps can help you craft an ideal budget and track other financial metrics such as your net worth, savings rate, and spending patterns. One such app, Lunch Money, offers many features to help make budgeting easier with automatic account syncing, adding manual accounts, and customizing the data. Lunch Money offers several perks

We all know that scams and digital fraud are on the rise. But did you know that certain area codes can indicate potential phone scams? Answering calls or calling unknown people from these area codes – even if they called you first – may cost you money and time and even ruin your credit score. 

Near the end of 2023, Mint announced that they were closing up shop by March of 2024. For years, I’d used Mint in my early to mid-twenties to help me manage spending. Budgeting is a key component of responsible money management and Mint made it super easy. Over the years, I focused more on investing