Weekly roundup of recommended personal finance articles from around the web. Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 live with their parents (Relevant Magazine). It’s common to criticize this as evidence that today’s young people are not “launching” well, but in this interview with on Focus on the Family, Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary […]
Of all the spending decisions you make, housing is the most important one. It’s probably your biggest expense, so it’s essential to get it right. Doing so is one of the most important keys to being able to live generously, save and invest adequately, and live with financial margin and peace of mind. How Much of a […]
Housing is most people’s biggest expense. That’s why, of all of the expenses we each have, it’s essential to get our housing costs right. It’s one of the most important keys to being able to be generous, save and invest adequately, and live with financial margin and peace of mind. Here’s how to spend smart […]
A home is typically a person’s largest expense, which is why it’s so important to choose well when buying a house. And there’s a lot more to it than choosing what type of countertops to get. From a financial standpoint, it means buying a home you can truly afford and getting the right mortgage at […]
Your credit score plays an important role in determining whether you will qualify for a mortgage and, if so, at what interest rate. On a $200,000 mortgage, for example, someone with a good score (760 or higher) will pay nearly $200 less per month than a person with a bad score (639 or lower). You […]
For many couples, money is a tough topic. That’s why, for the past couple of months, I’ve been using the first post of the month to focus on ideas for making money work in marriage. It’s also why I created a financial workshop to help engaged and newly married couples get their relationship started in […]
Writing about the “new normals” brought on by the Great Recession has become, well, a new normal for many media outlets. Adding to the conversation, Fortune magazine has come up with five new normals that it believes really will stick. Here they are, along with my thoughts. 1. Long-term unemployment. For those who have jobs, […]
If you’re in the market to buy a house, there are two resources I came across recently that I recommend. First, the book Mind Your Own Mortgage has a lot of helpful advice, especially author Robert Bernabé’s recommended process for finding the lowest-cost mortgage. By that, he isn’t talking about interest rates or monthly payments. […]
Garrison Keillor once joked that when people are young they often dream about being painters or poets, but the single biggest destroyer of all such romantic career notions is a 30-year mortgage. Get one of those, he said, and you’ll chain yourself to an eight-by-eight cubicle for the next 30 years as you labor to […]
It sounds like a horrific scene out of some sci-fi movie set decades down the road – lots of computer databases filled with lots of information about…you! But it’s not some fictionalized account of the future; it’s today’s reality. As described in Consumer Reports, information about your use of credit, insurance claims, medical history, and […]
