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Planning for Big Purchases
What’s the best way to protect yourself financially when you make a big purchase? How can you determine whether it’s best to pay in cash or take out a loan? Most people don’t make large purchases very often, so when the time comes to think about buying a new car or...
Managing Your Money: The Importance of a Strong Money Mindset
When you think about “personal finance,” what comes to mind? Most people automatically think about financial strategies, like investing or saving for retirement. But effective financial management isn’t just about these tactical actions. There’s another crucial part:...
How to Balance Parenthood and Your Career
It’s not the 1950s anymore – we’re no longer living in a world where every family can afford a white picket fence and 2.5 kids while Mom stays at home and Dad’s blue-collar salary covers all the expenses and a yearly vacation. We’re in the post-COVID 21st century...
Financial Planning for Millennials and Gen Zers
When you think about financial planning, do you immediately picture your parents or grandparents meeting with a retirement planner and talking about their investment portfolio or their estate plan? It’s how many people view financial planning, but you don’t have to be...
Essential Protections to Put in Place Before Buying a Home
Whether you’re getting ready to buy your first home or are looking to upsize or downsize, there are many essential things to do before signing the closing papers. Buying a home can be exciting, but there’s also some financial risk involved. Of course, one of the best...
Finance Fundamentals: The Four Things You Can Do With Money
When you boil it down, there are four things you can do with money: spend, save, invest, or give. Every transaction, from your emergency fund contribution to your morning latte to the $20 you stick in your niece’s birthday card, falls into one of those four...
It’s a Down Market: What Should You Do?
Being in a down market isn’t fun. But unfortunately, that’s where we are right now. It would be great if we could say that the market will be back in no time, but that’s not likely. Chances are we’ll have to deal with this bear market for at least a little longer. So...
The Number One Secret to Financial Success
If you’ve spent any time researching personal finance, you’ll know that there are countless podcasts, blogs, and books promising to give you The Key or The Method or The Secret to financial success. Unfortunately, most of those promises end up being nothing more than...
Budgeting, Setting Goals, and Choosing Trade-offs Wisely
Here at Everyday Money, we like to question the conventional wisdom of the personal finance world. Because honestly, a lot of those hard-and-fast rules for “smart” money management are anything but. Case in point? The constant focus on “financial freedom.” What does...
Key Financial Metrics To Help You Understand Your Money
When you’re just starting to manage your finances, it can be overwhelming to think about everything you “should be” keeping track of. Do you need to record every purchase, even if it’s just a gas station soda? Should you set up a stock alert for every investment in...
Changes Ahead: How Our Financial Priorities Shift
It would be nice to think that you could create a “set it and forget it” plan to manage your finances. And while something like that might work well for a while, it’s not sustainable in the long term. You’ll probably experience several changes in your income,...
What to Do When Money Feels Overwhelming
Do you feel unclear about where your money is going but unsure of how to get a better handle on the situation? If so, you aren’t the only one – it’s a fairly common problem. We see countless individuals and couples who don’t really know what their finances look like....
Appreciating Where You Are Right Now
Managing your money well is a never-ending process. There’s always something new to learn and ways you can improve. It’s important to listen to new viewpoints and make modifications to your financial goals and budget. But balance is also important. Sometimes, the...
Want to Change Your Money Goals? Permission Granted
A common piece of financial planning advice is to set some money goals for yourself and your family. Some popular goals are building up an emergency fund or saving for a mortgage down payment, a new vehicle, a vacation, or retirement. Having a clear financial goal can...
The Problem With Future Thinking
Financial planning often centers on the future: preparing to buy a home, having children, handling an emergency, or retiring. That sort of future thinking is extremely important when it comes to your big-picture financial plans. But too much future thinking can...
Gen Y and Gen Z: Changing Financial Priorities
If you’re like most millennials or members of Generation Z, you grew up hearing about traditional financial priorities: graduate college, get a good job, buy a house, have children, save for retirement. But this cookie-cutter plan isn’t necessarily right for everyone,...
Personal Finance Is Personal: Figuring Out What Works for You
Google “personal finance” or anything similar and you’ll get an endless list of advice from experts. On the one hand, it’s great that so much information is readily available. On the other hand, it’s extremely frustrating when all of those experts have different...
When You Have to Budget Your Money (and When You Don’t)
Don’t get us wrong: Here at Everyday Money, we believe budgeting is important. However, we do take a different stance from some other financial professionals. We don’t think that budgeting is something that every person needs to do all the time. There are times and...
How to Negotiate a Higher Salary for a New Job
So you’ve decided it’s time to get a new job. You’ve emailed hundreds of copies of your resume, filled out thousands of fields in online applications, and memorized the protocols for Zoom interviews. All your hard work paid off and you finally have it — a job offer....
Identifying and Honoring Your Spending Needs
It’s that time of year when everyone is focused on self-improvement. Resolutions revolve around recovering from the excesses of the holiday season by making healthier choices and better financial decisions. It’s time to get your budget back in gear, right? Well,...
2022 Tax Updates: How They’ll Impact You
The IRS has announced changes to income tax rules for the upcoming tax year, 2022. These adjustments are due to inflation, which is currently at a historically high rate. The tax brackets have shifted, and there are new numbers for the standard deduction, exemptions,...