It’s no secret that it’s a tough economy out there. Moreover, the job market is especially difficult these days.
Thus, finding a job is already hard enough right now, what else could make it harder?
Well, increasingly employers are looking toward your credit score as a way to evaluate you as a job candidate. Yup, along with your resume, many employers will also look at your credit report to determine whether to hire you.
Sound ridiculous? Just as other lenders look at your credit score to determine your riskiness as a borrower, employers may also be trying to determine whether you would also be a liability and how responsible you have been with your own debt.
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Curious about how your spending really adds up?
Mint.com created this interactive tool to calculate your regular spending.
Check it out and see if it accounts for your expenses.
There’s little doubt that short-term investments are important when you are young.
After all us young adults have a lot of goals ahead of us. Many of these goals aren’t nearly as long-term as say retirement. For instance, we want to own a home someday, get a car, maybe pursue more education at some point, etc.
A lot of times this means that we have to save a good amount of money to reach these goals. Moreover, it’s also important that we make the most of the money we save by investing it.
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Don't Waste Your Time
Being a young guy myself, I understand that the biggest barrier to managing our finances is motivation
Excuse #1 – I Don’t Have To Worry About It Now
Subconsciously we tell ourselves, “I have so much time ahead of myself. Learning to manage my finances is just not a high priority to me right now.”
We think that we don’t need to worry about it until we are older and have more responsibilities and commitments. At this age, we believe that there is simply no pressing need to invest, save for retirement, budget, etc.
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If you thought I was going to say “debt,” you are unfortunately mistaken.
Indeed, as with many things, the answer is actually “both” if you are able.
The choice doesn’t have to be one or the other, and in some cases it may be good to mix it up. It’s important to realize this, as you can under-utilize the money you have.
For instance, you don’t need to payoff your debt at the expense of investing in your retirement. In fact, saving for retirement can be just as important as paying off your debts. If you think about it, you may spend nearly 30 years inretirement. Thus, you better save enough to last you that long time span.
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Make More Dough!
Sometimes I get asked, “Is there another way I can make supplemental income?”
Many of us young adults don’t really have money to manage in the first place. As such, we need supplemental income to help us reach our investing and savings goals.
In this post, I am going to go over a way you can make supplemental income while simultaneously doing something that makes use of your passions and interests.
Not only will you have the income to reach your investing goals faster, but you will also have some fun doing it!
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Mint.com has to be one of my favorite applications for keeping track of my finances.
It allows me to plan budgets, look at my transactions, get reports of my spending behavior, etc.
Not only is it extremely useful, but it is a very easy web application to use and it is FREE!
I have a full review of Mint.com here.
In this post, I am going to go over a great new feature that Mint.com has recently unveiled.
What’s particularly useful about this feature is that it help you plan and track your financial goals and does it in less than a few steps.
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Hammer Time!
Don’t get me wrong. I have mad respect for MC Hammer. Indeed, there are few people who could amass so much wealth in such a small time period. You try making tens of millions of dollars in less then a couple of years.
However, the very first person I thought of when it came to financial mismanagement was MC Hammer.
In this post, I want to talk about the essential way to getting yourself on the road to wealth and maintaining it. MC Hammer is a perfect example of someone on the opposite equation, who found himself fall hard and fast financially from true riches.
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For a complete lack of a better word…sh*t happens.
Imagine losing a crucial source of income like a job or being suddenly unable to pay off debts because of an accident.
Sucks doesn’t it?
Misfortune happens to ordinary people like you and me everyday. In many cases, we can’t plan for such disasters as they come completely out of nowhere. There’s very little warning until the problem strikes.
However, though we don’t own a crystal ball or have the ability to see our futures, we can at least prepare for the worst.
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There actually is such a thing as “smart” debt.
In fact, knowing what constitutes this kind of debt, I believe, is one of the most important things to know when managing your own finances and especially important to know for young debt.
Why? Well, being able to avoid those “stupid” debts will allow you to save both a lot of money and trouble in the long run.
In this post, I am going to go over what I call the “Golden Rule of Debt” which will allow you to choose the right kind of debt in the future.
The Golden Rule of Debt
The Golden Rule of Debt is simple:
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