Say you are awarded a bonus and are able to make a $7,000 lump sum payment on your mortgage. After making the payment, you are interested in reducing your minimum-required monthly payments on your fixed mortgage in order to reflect your reduced principle. How would you go about doing that? What does it mean to [...]
With summer coming to an end, you or your children or grandchildren may be headed off to college during the next couple of months. Earning a college degree opens so many doors, but of course, it comes with significant expenses. Thankfully, many colleges and non-profits offer financial support to help off-set these expenses. Even still, [...]
“Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.” — poet Ogden Nash Indeed, it's never easy to tackle your credit card debt, but with half the year behind us, June is a great time to reevaluate the extent of your debt and start taking [...]
Summer is around the corner, and many of us are planning some vacations to enjoy time with friends or family. Hopefully you have asked how do I budget for vacations and are prepared. As you make reservations and prepare summer budgets, take time to review your monthly budget. How much money have you set aside [...]
This past Tuesday, April 14, marked another national Equal Pay Day — an annual reminder of the persisting wage gap between men and women in the United States. To help you better understand the factors contributing to such a gap and the repercussions of discriminatory income practices, ELM3 has compiled a series of articles on [...]
Budgeting can be a tedious process, especially when you are hard-pressed to find time to enter your expenditures at the end of each week or month. Even then, if you wait too long, you might overspend without realizing it. I was having this issue while using an excel spreadsheet for budgeting. Because I had to manually [...]
April 1 is fast approaching, and if you turned 70 1/2 in 2014, you may want to mark this day on your calendar. Those who celebrated that pivotal half birthday last year have until April 1 to take their first "required minimum distribution" (RMD) from their retirement accounts. If you do not take the distribution, [...]
If your car unexpectedly breaks down or you are laid off, having an emergency fund could help you and your family remain afloat. Otherwise, you may go even further into debt when emergencies arise, or at the very least, you will have to spend significant time and energy completely re-working your budget. Even while many [...]
A nightmare scenario: You save a portion of each of your paychecks for retirement. You invest frugally and work towards paying off outstanding debts and loans. Yet 10 or even 15 years into retirement, you are running low on funds, and you ask yourself, how did I reach this point? Indeed, many Americans fail to fully [...]
Spring cleaning may usually involve combing through drawers inexplicably full of bobby pins, UNO cards, and silverware; however, in lieu of (or in addition to) these grueling vacuuming adventures, consider whipping out your old bank statements for a good ol' fashioned financial spring cleaning. The Stoplight System will help you evaluate your spending and savings habits [...]
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