One of the most common questions I hear is: “What should I do first with my money?” Should we pay off student loans before investing in a 401(k)? Should we pay off high interest credit card debt before building a rainy day fund?
This is a really important question. If you got a tax refund or bonus check tomorrow, would you feel confident about knowing where to allocate your money? Most of us have multiple financial goals, but contributing to all of them at once isn’t practical.
Being an entrepreneur has some incredible perks. We get to enjoy freedom and control over our businesses and our lives, and we get to spend our days working on projects we are extremely passionate about.
This tremendous opportunity also comes with it’s challenges. We also have to wear many hats. We’re expected to understand the basics of law, taxes, marketing, operations, AND finance.
While we may hope that the ‘money stuff’ won’t be important if we make it big or that it all will work itself out, having a strong foundation can make or break the success of our business and enable us to grow our business.
For many of us, income-based repayment is a great option for our student loans. Instead of receiving a debilitatingly high bill each month, we are charged an amount based on what we earn, typically making payments much more manageable. Then, after 20-25 years of on-time payments, our loans are forgiven. Voila!
Surprisingly, what happens next is often not discussed. Don’t kill the messenger - it’s not pretty.
If we are financially well (imagine a nice savings buffer in our bank accounts), we can negotiate harder to be paid fairly at work.
We can leave relationships and jobs where we’re being mistreated. We can take more risks in our careers without worrying about the financial implications. We’d see more women on boards and management teams.
The average cost of raising a child in America is $233,610 (excluding the cost of college). Raising a child 0-2 carries an average annual cost of $12,680, while raising a teenager costs parents about $13,900 each year. Given that in 2017 the median household income in the U.S. climbed to $61,372 (before taxes), it’s no surprise that raising a child is a huge financial strain - and the average household has 1.9 children.
For those of us who have the privilege and opportunity to choose where we spend our money, it’s very much a personal choice that feels best when we align our spending with our values. This means that we prioritize spending on what’s most important to us.
As a recovering investment banker and current entrepreneur, I am very familiar with burnout. But it wasn’t until recently that I learned that feeling “burned out” was more than just an adjective.
Colleagues and I shared that we were feeling “burned out” on some (or many) days but we didn’t realize it was a legitimate condition that has some serious health implications.
To learn more, I asked Belma McCaffrey, career coach and founder of Work Bigger, to share the signs of burnout and what we can do to combat it.
One of the most common questions I get about student loans is whether or not it makes sense to refinance. Why? We’re looking for any way to lessen the burden and make it easier to pay off our student loans. Here’s everything you need to know about refinancing your student loans and how to determine if refinancing makes sense for you.
Many people love using a debit card rather than a credit card because it’s clear and simple. At any given time, you can look and know exactly how much money you have available. You don’t have to wait until the end of the payment period, and you can’t spend money you don’t have.
Recently, I’ve been getting more and more questions about whether or not it’s safe to use debit cards with so much fraud, skimming, hacks, and scams going on. What are the risks we take on by using our debit cards and how would we handle the fall out?
