When it comes to making major purchases like a home, many people spend time beforehand preparing. It’s a good idea to think of life insurance the same way. A life insurance policy can help pay off a mortgage loan so beneficiaries can continue to live in the home or to remove the immediate need to… Read More

Once you’ve tied the knot and made it past the honeymoon phase, reality sets in. Love won’t always save the day, but healthy communication offers a fighting chance. So while the two of you are sorting everything out and settling into your new life as one, a money talk should be at the top of the… Read More

Buying a home is a big decision that includes understanding how much house you can afford and working through the mortgage and purchase process. Some people will only do this once. Others will replace their main residence a few times – selling their home to buy another one. Still other people will keep their home and purchase… Read More

We may all have health insurance now, but that doesn’t make our medical bills magically disappear. No, we still have plenty to pay out-of-pocket. In recent years, employers have shifted a greater portion of health care costs to workers. The 19th annual Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health employer survey found that employees now pay for 37%… Read More

The process of finding the perfect home usually has many steps. Once you’ve determined how much house you can afford, you can look seriously at the options. While some things may be obvious right away, such as a broken window, others require you to pay a little more attention. Here are four specifics to check… Read More

We may love to dream and fantasize about our retirement, but we usually don’t look forward to the retirement planning. Thinking about a long-term goal like retirement can be overwhelming, but it can also be inspiring. Sometimes knowing what we are working toward can help motivate us to establish healthy financial habits and get there…. Read More

Here’s an unfortunate scenario that popped up on Reddit recently: A man moved in with his girlfriend, and he opened a credit card to handle shared expenses. First, he added her as an authorized user, but then he added her as an accountholder, at which point she transferred $10,000 of balances from other credit cards… Read More

Congress is taking aim at high-rate, short-term lenders in the U.S. Representatives Matt Cartwright and Steve Cohn are joining forces with Senators Dick Durbin, Barbara Boxer, Richard Blumenthal, Jeff Merkley and Sheldon Whitehouse to establish a national usury limit for consumer credit transactions. Their targets are banks and finance companies that market payday- and account-advance… Read More

Before I had a credit card — before I even knew what a credit card was — I knew credit card debt was something to be avoided at all costs. I hadn’t yet graduated from banking of the piggy variety, and my mom already had me thinking about debt. She used my childhood curiosity as… Read More

As the U.S. economy recovers from the recession, many lenders have eased financing standards, resulting in an increase in loans available to consumers with poor credit. The earliest and strongest recovery came in the auto market, and while a bump in subprime used-car lending has triggered some murmuring of a bubble, it appears to be… Read More