Click Here To Discover Your Credit Score - FREE Credit Karma™ is a completely free pro-consumer service dedicated to demystifying the credit landscape. With our credit simulators, free credit scores, credit advice, and credit score comparisons, our goal is to empower consumers to more actively manage their credit and their financial health.
Since State Farm* has entered into the field of financial services, I'm talking with more families about planning for the future. While families almost always want to talk about retirement, their most immediate concern is saving for their children's college education.
This is wise. College education will, in most cases, be a family's second largest expense after home ownership, so it deserves careful planning. rising college costs make saving even more important.
If you are investing money or planning on doing so, there is one very important question you should ask yourself--what kind of investor am I? Knowing if you are an aggressive or conservative investor is the first step to knowing how you should invest your money.
A key reason for involvement with organizations or community groups is for networking opportunities. Participation provides the opportunity to be recognized in your field and noted for your skills, or it may provide the opportunity to get connected with decision-makers of companies. An additional benefit of participation on projects is the potential for learning and the opportunity to expand your skill sets. Improvement in written and oral communication skills, negotiation, collaboration, leadership, assertiveness, conflict resolution and problem solving are likely outcomes from participation, in addition to the development of new relationships, establishment of new networks and education received from membership.
Conundrum: mystery, challenge, poser, problem, riddle. I think these words fairly well describe the process of understanding one's credit score in terms of how it comes to be, and what you can do to manage and improve it.
Credit scoring is one subject that I have to admit I'm fairly puzzled by. Just when I think I'm rocking along with a great history and the scores to match, a small business loan smacks my score down because the account is too new, and affects my ratio of what I owe to what's available to me. So my scores were high enough to get the loan, but I'm penalized in "credit-land" now that I have it.
I'm really excited about my new book The Money Therapist: A Woman's Guide to Creating a Healthy Financial Life (Seal Press), which was released in April.
Six years ago I founded Money Wi$e Women to ensure every woman is financially articulate, confident, secure and independent. Since November 2002 more than 5,000 women (and men) have attended 50 Money Wi$e Women Conferences throughout Washington State; Portland, OR; Boise, ID; Sacramento, San Francisco and Visalia (my hometown), CA. My book is yet another way to eduate and empower more women.
Visit TheMoneyTherapist.net if you want to hear a podcast interview about The Money Therapist. Purchase The Money Therapist: A Woman's Guide to Creating a Healthy Financial Life on Amazon.com .
With downturns in the economy, it can be expected that a tough employment market will follow. Spending too much time deciding whom to blame for a layoff, business closure, or consolidation that impacts your employment situation will not change your predicament, should you experience any of the above circumstances. Your best defense and hope for recovery is to have a plan in place. Careful planning prior to an unwelcome event will allow you to ride the wave.
How much money do you expect to earn? Or do you just assume that if you work hard and do good work, you will earn more money? Guess what—this isn’t always the case. It isn’t fair, to be sure. In a fair world, all our hard work WOULD translate into fabulous money automatically. But in THIS world, we actually have to take the bull by the horns and demand our worth. However, before we can “demand” more money (ask for it) we actually have to expect to make more money in the first place. As the director of the Women's Earning Institute, I've noticed that a lot of women have suppressed expectations around income.
Turn on the news or pick up a newspaper and you'll probably find something about identity theft because it continues to be the fastest growing white-collar crime in the United States. Identity theft victims spend long periods of time and their own money cleaning up the mess than identity thieves have made.
You can minimize your risk of identity theft by taking the following steps:
Don't give out your Social Security number without determining if it's really necessary. Your employer and financial institution need your Social Security number for wage and reporting. Other businesses may ask for your Social Security number for general record keeping. Before giving your Social Security number ask the following questions:
Why do you need it? How will it be used? How do you protect it from being stolen? What will happen if I don't give it to you?
Boy, we financial people sure can be bossy sometimes, always telling you how to change your money management skills to improve your life. Honestly, even I get tired sometimes of reading the never-ending parade of financial “how-to's.”
So I thought today should be a celebration of all the things you've done right financially. No matter where you are, and what you wish to change, I know there are things with your money that you've done well. But chances are, if you're not where you want to be yet, you probably haven't given yourself a lot of credit for the little financial victories you've experienced along the way.
The movie “The Secret” created quite a buzz because it teaches how to enjoy more of anything you could want in your life, including money, by employing the laws of attraction and opening yourself up to greater possibilities than ever.
“Attraction rather than promotion” is not a new concept--twelve-step programs have been employing it for decades with great success. But it isn't one of the more common strategies in terms of wealth accumulation; the more traditional messages tend to focus more on what we're after--the right funds or returns for instance--than on what riches we can draw to us.
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