photo credit: nattu

A recent post at Girls Just Wanna Have Funds looked at the interesting question of when is the right time to decide to start a family.

There are obviously advantages and disadvantages to both sides of the coin - having children young (in your early 20s, say) or later (in your 30s). From the financial side of things, these are the main pros and cons that could tip your decision making:

• If you have children young, they will probably be out of college before you retire, so you won’t need to worry about college costs coming at the same time as you stop working (or having to retire later because of college costs)
• On the other hand, if you hve children young, you’re likely to be financially less stable and then might find it harder to save for the future when you have child-related costs at the same time.
• If you have children later, you will have a chance to build up financial security first and probably own a good portion of your home.
• But again, on the other hand, if you have children later, you might be accustomed to living a more high-spending lifestyle, having done it for a long time, and have trouble adjusting to more financial pressures and possibly a much lower income.

Now that US banks are some line of credit holders from accessing their saved cash, the idea of building up an emergency cash fund has become important to even more people. If you haven’t got an emergency fund, or it’s not enough to last you six to twelve months, then try following these steps to ensure your financial safety in an emergency: (more…)

photo credit: ellievanhoutte

It’s not always easy to each cheap and healthy, but many consumers are slowly realizing that their local grocery store may hold the key: prepared food counters. In fact, grocery stores say that they’ve seen a sharp increase in the popularity of these foods, and have in turn improved selections to account for more varied diets and nutrition. (more…)

photo credit: The Pug Father

I just read about a really interesting way to both get a decent emergency fund together and cut your spending in a post from The Street, based on the “Pay to Use” system.

Basically, this system means that whenever you do anything around your house that in end effect costs you money, you should pay up front for it. For example, you might decide that it should cost you $5 an hour to watch television, or $1 every time you do a load of washing. (more…)

photo credit: Alex Barth

It’s more bad news for the Generation X and Y’ers - it looks like they may have a serious problem when retirement rolls around. In addition to future problems with Social Security, young workers have also shown that they cash out their 401(k) accounts every time they switch employers. And since the average young person will work for seven employers in their lifetime, they many not accumulate enough savings before age 65. (more…)

photo credit: kevindooley

Over at About.com’s Financial Planning site they recently talked about asking for a raise at work. Obviously, this is one of the easiest ways to increase the amount of money you’re earning, but most of us find it one of the hardest things to do.

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If you’re among today’s mid-twenty or early-thirties work set, you may view retirement as being a long way off. That’s true, of course, since you have at least thirty to forty years before the big 65 rolls around. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start saving today. In fact, if you begin to save right now, compound interest will work hard for you, letting you retire on a much larger chunk of change.

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photo credit: chidorian

School lunches have never been anything to write home about - pork and beans, plain spaghetti, and greasy pizza are noontime staples. Unfortunately for many students, though, these mediocre lunches will soon be just fond memories of the past, as a failing economy causes parents and school officials to economize their lunch ingredient purchase.

Parents, instead of paying for the rising cost of school lunches, have begun to pack their children’s lunches. Chopped veggies and hand-packed potato chips are favorites for daytime snacks, and peanut butter (if a school allergy ban does not prohibit it) and Spam, instead of lunchmeat, are best bets for lunch’s main course.

Parents are not the only ones focusing on lunch’s bottom line. Major food corporations, like Sara Lee Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc., have combined increased prices with smaller sizes to stabilize their profits. In many case, size reductions are tricky, with same-sized packages carrying less food. For struggling families, the only answer is to be vigilant about purchases.

As prices continue to increase, with no end in sight, companies, schools, and parents will have to watch their bottom line. Try to economize by buying shelf products in bulk, changing eating habits to incorporate lower-cost foods, and reducing meat consumption in favor of healthy, less expensive fruits and vegetables.

photo credit: Logan Antill

Obviously, the best place to start at building yourself a good credit rating is right at the beginning, and not waiting until debts start to mount up and you have to fix it. Here are some tips that young people should follow to ensure from the very start that they do the best to have a good credit rating:

• Open checking or savings accounts and maintain them well - no bounced checks - as these will prove you can handle money reliably.
• Apply for a credit card - but always pay the balance in full every month. If for some reason things get out of hand, always pay the minimum amount and wherever possible, pay more.
• Don’t apply for multiple credit cards or loan facilities at the same time. Wait at least six months in between applications.
• If you have a parent or sibling with a good credit rating, you can ask them to be added as a secondary card holder on their credit card account, and their good credit will reflect on you.
• Get your credit report annually to check for any errors on it, and always fix them immediately.
• Don’t close your credit card accounts even if you are not using them anymore - debt-free credit cards that you’ve had for a longer period show financial stability.
• Make all your payments for credit cards and loans on time. Late payments affect your rating badly.
• Increase your allowable credit but don’t use it - having a bigger credit limit (but lower debt) means you have a good debt-to-credit ratio which has a good affect on your credit rating.

photo credit: James & Vilija

Most stock market investors in the United States are not really happy these days. But CNN Money has come up with a long list of 21 actions to take to make lemonade out of the lemons they’re getting from the stock market at the moment. Some of the highlights include these tips:

• Spend time you’d normally spend trading learning about how to trade better instead - read some great investing books and do some research online
• Get some tax write-offs by selling off some of your losses - but check the tax implications precisely
• Sell off your energy stocks while they’re at a high, and before they start to fall
• Ensure that your investing expenses are as low as possible - if you’re moving money around, make sure it’s to funds with the lowest possible fees, for example
• Swap some of your shares into more conservative stocks - they call it “tweaking your portfolio”
• Be extra aware of the danger of scams - scammers love to take advantage of people’s anxieties in economic conditions like those we’re experiencing now; the same goes for unscrupulous salesmen
• Move money out of government bond investment, because high demand has pushed down yields on these
• Make an effort to save more, knowing that it’s a short-term necessity