photo credit: James Cridland
Starting a new job is an excellent time to look into setting your finances up better. An interesting article from Mint gives a long list of tips for new employees who want to do something about managing their finances from the word go. The tips include:

• Get your pay check paid by direct deposit rather than a check in the hand - it’s less tempting to spend it. (In most countries outside the United States, getting paid by check is impossible - bank deposits are the only way).
• Arrange for direct payments from your salary into a savings or investment account - pay yourself before you pay others!
• With a new income amount, it’s a great time to draw up a personal budget and find good strategies to help you stick to it.
• Use part of the new income to build up an emergency fund.
• Make sure you get sufficient health coverage from your new employer, or set up your own if the employer doesn’t offer any.
• Learn more about tax deductions and tax liability so that you can maximise how much money you get to take home each month by knowing what should be withheld.
• Use the regular income to regularly service your debt and try to reduce it as much as possible.
• Set up the right kind of retirement savings accounts. If you have a 401K that your employer will match, contribute the maximum amount possible.

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Money isn’t everything. Most of us can grasp this concept, although we might have difficulty applying it in real life, where money seems pretty important to make sure we have a roof over our head, food to eat … and lots of gadgets and gizmos to play with. A recent article at Yahoo Finance reinforces the idea that money doesn’t buy happiness. And there are a few interesting reasons why this is the case: (more…)

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Unfortunately for many community college students in the U.S., student loans are completely unavailable to them. These students — a disproportionate number of them being minorities — cannot take advantage of low-interest federal student loans because their community colleges refuse to participate in the federal student loan program. (more…)

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When you have your own home, the temptation to start renovating it to create your dream home is high. But some upgrades might not add that much value to your investment. These ideas from Yahoo’s Finance pages can help you decide which home renovations will have the best payoff for you:

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When it comes to cartoons and comparisons of wealth, the problem invariably arises that these characters, at least most of the time, exist in different worlds. Where a million dollars might make one the richest man on Earth in one world, the same amount could make one a pauper in another. That being said, some characters are just blatantly the richest cartoon characters out there.

Scrooge McDuck, Disney/Duck Tales – The guy has a ten story vault… filled with gold coins… that he swims in. Need I say more? Scrooge McDuck began his wealth as a child when he was given a dime for shining a man’s shoes. He would keep that “#1 Dime” as his luck charm and to this day considers it the most valuable thing he owns. Scrooge McDuck is the epitome of the richest man, er duck in the world. It’s his whole reason for existing.

Flintheart Glomgold, Disney/Duck Tales – If you’re going to mention Scrooge McDuck then you have to mention his rival, Flintheart Glomgold. If Flintheart has 98 cents, then Scrooge has 99. Unfortunately for Flintheart, this is how things have always been despite any of Flintheart’s dastardly plans. At the very least you have to credit him for one thing, he’s not lazy.

Bruce Wayne, DC Comics – Billionaire playboy by day (or so he’d have you think), caped crusader by night. Bruce Wayne’s wealth began with the inheritance from his murdered parents. From those beginnings, his wealth has grown exponentially. Lex Luthor would have made this main list too if it weren’t for the fact that Bruce Wayne now also owns everything Lex once had.

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A lot of us imagine that to be more environmentally friendly we’d have to spend more money. But a new David Bach book called Go Green, Live Rich suggests exactly the opposite: if you live a greener lifestyle, you can actually save money.

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Insurance salespeople will assure you that a dozen different kinds of insurance are necessary to feel secure in life. But often these very insurance policies are what’s holding you back financially, insuring you for low-risk “what if” scenarios, and very often not even actually covering what you think they are. Try these tips to figure out exactly what insurances are important in your life:

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Everybody has a credit card, and everybody knows the basics of how it works. But there are a few lesser known facts that could cause you problems. They’re not secrets, as such – they’re public knowledge, often found in the small print of your credit card contract – but they’re facts that you should be aware of to avoid getting into trouble with your credit card.

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