Buying a home should be an exciting process. It's an expensive process but it should also be a great process. In today's market, it is unrealistic for many to come up with 20% down on a house. On a $200,000 home, that is a down deposit of $40,000. For those who don’t have a 20% deposit, there are a number of low down and ... read more
A Tax Refund is Free Money to the Government
I used to be excited to get a tax refund. It was always, "wow, what am I going to do with all this money?" When I was in law school and had my daughter I was the recipient of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC is a refundable tax credit for low to moderate income working individuals and couples, particularly ... read more
Making Your Financial Pledge
This is the new year. January 2018. Around this time people are in the beginning stages of their New Year’s Resoluton. Some of those resolutions involve finances: paying debt, saving more, etc. Rather than make a New Year’s Resolution, why not make a Financial Pledge? It’s a pledge you would keep to yourself no matter the ... read more
Single, Saving, and Traveling
I often see posts on different pages asking 1. how people afford to travel and 2. how one does it as a single person. I am a single parent and my one goal in life was to take one nice trip per year with my daughter. The first trip I took was to Disney World. My family had planned for some time so I was able to pay very ... read more
Creating Your Own Sweep Accounts
Not many of us are fortunate enough to have enough money at the end of the month in order to put that towards savings. Many of us could, through budgeting and cutting back, commit and create our own sweep accounts. A sweep account simply is when a financial institution takes your excess money and deposits it into a savings ... read more
Millennials and Home Buying
There has been a lot in the news about millenials and the housing market pushing them out. A millennial is defined as anyone born between 1977 and 1994 so that is anyone between 22 and 39 years old. The millennial generation is also the generation saddled with the most debt because of student loans. I ... read more