The end of the year is an important milestone for taxes and financial matters. Here are some important deadlines to keep in mind: Benefit “Open Enrollment” periods – Workplace November 1, 2021 – January 31, 2022 Last day to enroll in new health insurance plan on healthcare.gov January 15, 2022 Tax loss harvesting (more about …
Budgeting
Employee Stock Options, Part 2 of 2
Last week, I discussed what a stock option was and how there are two different kinds. When an employer gives you/grants you options, it is not considered a taxable event. It’s only when you DO something with the options that you have to pay attention and figure out if it is taxable or not. There …
Credit Card Debit
Welcome to October, which is National Credit Card Awareness month! There was an article published on the Credible financial website that did a survey of 500 Americans with credit card debit. The survey said that of those survey participants, age 18-34 years, 33%+ said that debt is the scariest thing in their life. Just over …
Managing Money in A Relationship
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. …
Excess 529 Funds?
So, you were a #ResponsibleAdult and you planned for your child’s future with a 529 plan. They were attending school and you withdrew funds to pay for their tuition and room and board. Then, the universe threw you a curve ball, causing your child’s university to put all classes online and/or require students to stay …
College Funding Part 2
In my last post, I started to explain the different ways that parents (or whomever) can save money for college. This post covers 4 additional ways. Again, here is a handy dandy chart: Like Traditional IRAs, contribution limits apply to Roth IRAs. In addition, with a Roth IRA, your allowable contribution may be reduced or …
College Funding Part 1
May is “529” month (get it- 5/29? It’s a complete dad joke). I will be talking about college funding. Do you have a child or grandchild that will someday attend college? Great, now go back in time and start saving a lot of money about 5 years before they were born, and maybe you will …
Jill’s Journal: Teaching Children About Money
If you have children or grandchildren, or if you have a special relationship with your niece or nephew or the child of a dear friend, you can enrich their lives in many ways. One of the most important things you can teach is how to manage their money and invest for the future. The Three-Jar …
Emergency Savings
The government shutdown has shed light on a problem that plagues many in this country: what would you do, if you suddenly were out of a job, or missed a paycheck? That’s what credit cards are for, right? Spoiler alert: No. Pretty much any financial guru is going to tell you that one of the …
Jill’s Journal: Budgeting
Budget. The 6-letter dirty word. After the series of blog posts on debt, I figured I should talk about budgeting, even though, if you’re like most people, you’re not interested. A Gallup poll showed that less than 1/3 of Americans (32%) actually keep a formal budget, and that you are most likely to have a budget if …