A while back, I created a portfolio on Betterment. Betterment is one of the many robo-advisors available today. I saw the ads and at the time and I figured it was a good way to get into investing. In general, robo-advisors vastly simplify the process and basically does all of the work for you. I didn't have to worry about muddying the waters of things like ETFs, S&P 500 index funds, and mutual funds. Instead,…
Student loans are a growing problem in the US. According to the New York Fed, student loan debt stood at $1.46 trillion in Q4 2018. All this debt will definitely have people wanting to refinance student loans. But what are you options when you want to refinance student loans? Before answering this question, there is an important one we must answer first. Federal or Private Student Loans? Indeed, the first question we have to ask…
If you're new to investing (or even if you aren't!), you might ask yourself: what does a stock represent? Simply put, a stock represents a share in the ownership of a publicly-traded company. That's why you might sometimes hear them referred to as "shares." Stocks can come either in the form of preferred stock or common stock. What does a stock represent? A stock represents a "share" in the ownership of a publicly traded company. Investing…
There are a lot of personal finance books. Sure, not as many as there are blog posts on personal finance, but still. There are a lot of them. So how do you decide which ones are the best ones to read? Ten Best Personal Finance Books of All Time To help answer that question, I've put together a list of the top personal finance books. Adding these books to your collection is sure to set…
Hello again and welcome to another roundup! In the midst of churning out my own content, I want to be sure to feature some great posts from my favorite bloggers. I also do not necessarily have a particular "mission" for these posts yet. For now, I will just stick to posts that I find useful, or interesting - or both. Either way, you can expect to see these somewhere around there end/beginning of the week.…
Lately, I've been hearing a lot about the Marie Kondo Method. Marie Kondo is an organizing consultant who invented the method. It's also sometimes known as the KonMari Method. This new trend, plus growing environmental concerns, have really had me thinking. The thing is, so much of what we do comes down to conditioning. We've been conditioned to think that if we've had something for a while, it needs replacing. Whether that item is actually…