If "Giving Season" Was "Saving Season"

A particularly frugal friend of mine is obsessed with compound interest. With any financial decision, he doesn’t think “Is this item worth $50 to me,” he thinks “With compound interest, that $50 will be $100 when I retire and I’m old and broke and lonely, is this item worth $100 to me?” Unsurprisingly, he almost never spends any money on anything. While I don’t think it’s good to assume you’ll be old and broke and lonely (why not assume you’ll be old and rich and surrounded by loved ones?), it is an interesting thing to remember that, with a well chosen index fund or even a simple savings account, money grows. And especially during this giving season, it’s important to think about the nature of what we give and why.

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How to maximize your year-end bonus or raise

So you got a year-end bonus or raise? Right on. It’s tempting to think of this money as extra cash, especially if you got a bonus. The name itself implies extra. But before you get any fancy ideas about how to spend it, let’s talk about how you can maximize your financial windfall.

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Rock Bottom: Realizing You've Got To Change

A wise man once said bottom is just where you stop digging.  If you want, you can dig deeper and deeper, and there might be bedrock down there somewhere, but its hidden behind new layers of pain and stress, that you don’t have to go through if you don’t want. You could keep saying to yourself “it’s not that bad, I just need to a raise, get that new job, get cash flowing again and I’ll be OK.” Or you could look at the hole you are in and say “that’s it, this is bottom, we’re climbing out from here.” If you are constantly worried about money, frequently overdraft your checking account, hitting up friends and family for loans to cover a few weeks, it’s time to start climbing out. Your financial life doesn’t have to feel like this. If you build a financial cushion, you have 1-2 months worth of expenses safely sitting in checking, everything can be so much better. But you have to start, right now, living within your means and using credit as it was intended.

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Fraud Alert: Holiday fraud is on the rise.

Fraudsters don’t take vacations for the holidays. In fact, they only have happy holidays if they are successful  in ruining yours! There are three important steps in preventing holiday fraud – let’s call them Ho Ho Ho:

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