Gifting Limits All this month, I’ve been talking about debt. So why is this blog talking about gifting? Well, here’s my thought train: let’s say you have some debt and your parents or your grandma or your favorite aunt gives you some money to pay it off. Just, out of the goodness of their heart …
Life Changes
Student Loans
Forbes published an article about the student loan debt crisis a couple of years ago. Among the concerning statistics shared in the article, there was this little tidbit….student loan debt has now surpassed credit card and auto loan debt, making it the second highest consumer debt category, totaling more than $1.5 trillion. Unfortunately, dealing with …
The Ins and Outs of Long-Term Care Insurance
Some people think that when they get older and they have to go into an assisted living or nursing home facility, they will just be covered by Medicare or their regular health insurance. Wrong. Medicare doesn’t cover much of assisted living or nursing home stays. Your stay could be covered by Medicaid, which is for …
Winning the Lottery!
Winning the Lottery July 17th was National Lottery Day. So, did you play? Let’s imagine you winning the lottery! Congratulations! What’s the first thing you should do? If your answer was, post it on Facebook, you would be wrong. The best thing to do is to remain anonymous, if possible. Currently only five states allow …
Credit Card Benefits
We all know the basic benefits of a credit card—allowing you to pay for things over time and building your credit, and you might even be familiar with rewards such as cash back, miles, or points, as I talked about in last week’s blog. That said, I recently opened a business credit card and was …
Credit Card Travel Hacking
Gen Y & Z are seemingly obsessed with “hacks”. I know my 12-year-old son is always talking to me about various “life hacks” that he sees on TikTok. But one of the original life hacks is using credit cards for travel hacking—basically, using credit cards to the fullest to try to get things like free …
“Too Conservative” for Investing?
Am I too conservative for Investing? The market has been somewhat volatile this year and some of my clients have expressed fear that the markets are “too high” and they should get out until this is over. My question to them is—how do you know when it’s over? It’s very tempting to want to play …
Relationship’s and Finance
If you are in a relationship, are you on the same page when it comes to finance? No?…read on! I recently watched an old episode of How I Met Your Mother, in which Lily was hiding a massive amount of credit card debt from her husband. He didn’t know until they applied for a mortgage. …
LGBTQ+Pride Month
Welcome to Pride Month! June was chosen for LGBTQ+Pride Month to memorialize the Stonewall Riots which took place in June 1969. If you don’t know about the riots, Drunk History put together a great clip to tell you all about it here. As a result, you may hear about many pride events/festivals/parades happening this month. …
Can You Afford A Pet?
We adopted some cats a couple of years ago. As of this month, they are three years old, which apparently in cat years is 28 in human years. Little did we know the expenses coming for one cat, who is named Shadow, because he is all black like a shadow, even his little black nose. …