budget: Is Your Family's Spending Plan Right for Your Lifestyle? - 02/10/12 04:01 PM
Creating your family's spending plan is an important and fulfilling task to accomplish. It reflects your family's goals, values, and priorities. The Equifax Finance Blog welcomed new Family Money blogger Miranda Marquit this week. Her post about steps and considerations to make when creating your family's spending plan offers lots of good advice.
Marquit does not believe in "Keeping Up With the Joneses". Instead, she recommends thinking about what defines you as a family. Does your family spend time together? Take vacations? Partake in lots of extracurricular activities? From there, you can set goals and prioritize how to allocate your money … (1 comments)
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budget: How To Pay Off Debt: Prioritize Your Spending Needs And Your Debt Payments - 02/14/11 12:15 PM
Being in debt is a scary situation, and it can seem overwhelming to try to get a handle on where your money should go. If you're making an effort to pay off debt, you need to evaluate your mortgage payments, insurance premiums, utility bills, and other spending to see which are most important.
The credit experts at Equifax have put together a great post on budgeting and prioritizing when you're in debt. Their first piece of advice: Your mortgage payment is always your #1 priority. A family needs a safe place to live, and late mortgage payments will catch up with you … (0 comments)
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budget: Balancing What the Bank Says You Can Afford and What You Can Really Afford - 11/29/10 11:09 PM
When determining how much to spend on a home, your bank may have a different idea about your budget than you.
A mortgage lender might approve you for one amount, based on a conventional debt-to-income ratio, while you'll get more money if you go for an FHA loan with higher DTI limits or for an FHA 203K loan, which qualifies you for up to 125 percent of the sales price if work needs to be done to bring the property up to code.
At the same time, it might be that none of those amounts is what you're comfortable spending … (20 comments)
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budget: Running Out of Retirement Money? Make Your Money Outlive You - 06/17/10 11:27 AM
Equifax blogger Dan Solin is here to alleviate your retirement fears.
What's your biggest fear as a retiree? Outliving your money.
The securities industry is great at fearmongering. It wants you to believe you need it to avoid this fate. The harsh reality is that using brokers and advisers who tell you they can "beat the markets" makes running out of money a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Unfortunately, determining how much money you can withdraw from savings is not easy with all the misinformation that exists.
Here's one example. Remember when Peter Lynch, the former manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, was … (3 comments)
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budget: Buy, Close, Move IN!: Budgeting For Investment Property Costs - 04/19/10 01:30 PM
The following is an edited excerpt from my new book, Buy, Close, Move In!, which was published this month by HarperCollins. Investment Property Costs: Add these real estate expenses to your investment property budget.
In general, the costs of buying and owning investment real estate are similar to those of buying and owning a primary residence. You don’t want to skimp here just because you’re not planning on living in the property. First, if your tenants are unhappy, you’ll be unhappy because they’ll be constantly calling you to fix things. Second, life can change at the drop … (0 comments)
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budget: How Much House Can I Afford - 04/07/10 12:49 PM
How much house can I really afford? It's a question that's becoming increasingly common, and for good reason.
A top home buying mistakes is buying too big of a home or extending yourself too far trying to buy a dream home. Make sure you are comfortable with your monthly home budget.
There is more than just income to consider when deciding how much home you can afford.
Read the full story at thinkglink.com
… (0 comments)
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budget: RightSizing Your Finances in 2010 - 01/28/10 05:54 PM
During the 1990s and 2000s, people worked on the assumption that bigger was better. But was it?
Now people have to deal with the consequences of their spending habits and borrowing demands. Rightsizing is looking at your budget, your finances, your home, and your family and deciding what is right for you. You may need to cut back on expenses, luxuries, and discretionary spending but figure out what is important to you.
Rightsizing your finances is hardly anyone’s idea of a best way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. And it certainly doesn’t seem like the thing you’d want to do … (2 comments)
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budget: Top Three Financial Resolutions for the New Year - 12/26/09 12:17 PM
Make a New Year's Resolution to clean up your personal finances. Stick to a budget, live within your means, and put away savings every month. Below are the top three financial new year's resolutions. Make 2010 the year to stick to your financial new year's resolutions.
Do your personal finances need a tweak this year?
After two years of recession and an unemployment rate that topped 10 percent in 2009, it seems as though a little personal finance rebuilding might be in order.
But as we recover (slowly!) from the worst economy in decades, it’s a great opportunity to rethink … (2 comments)
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budget: Getting Financial Help On A Budget - 12/02/09 02:50 PM
Q: My husband is a teacher and I am a stay at home mom to our 3 sons. We are pretty much winging it when it comes to making decisions regarding our finances and could really use some advice in getting a better game plan for our future. Our budget is very limited though and we just can't afford to see a financial planner. What can we do to get some help?
If you have budgeting questions, you can set up a free budget counseling session with Credability.com, which is a network comprised of the top consumer credit counseling services … (10 comments)
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budget: Prepaying Mortgages With Low Interest Rates - 05/31/09 06:05 PM
Interest rates are at record lows. Does it make sense to prepay your mortgage when you have a really low interest rate? What's the best way to prepay a mortgage loan with a low interest rate? How can you ensure that the mortgage lender knows when you are sending in prepayments to your mortgage loan? It's up to you to track your mortgage loan prepayments and it's easiest if you prepay the same amount every month.
Quesiton: In your columns, you frequently say that by making an extra payment each month, you will shave 6 to 8 years off of your … (2 comments)
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budget: Paycheck to Paycheck: Wages and the Cost of Housing - 05/15/09 01:20 PM
With grocery stores advertising good deals, it's just one sign of retailers helping consumers. A recent study released by the Center for Housing Policy compared housing affordability against how much people earn. The study found that while the home prices have declined, many people still cannot afford to buy on their incomes. And in contrast to other states, Florida has become less affordable.
Here’s how the economists look at the world: If you have a job, you’ll pay your mortgage, credit card debt, student loans and auto loan payments each month. If you’re unemployed, you’ll pay until you run out of … (0 comments)
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budget: Personal Finance Resolutions Help Pay Off Debt - 01/07/09 09:36 PM
Summary: What are some personal finance resolutions you can make in 2009? Many people want to pay off debt, especially credit card debt. How can you pay off debt? It helps to live below your means and pay yourself first and last when you want to pay off debt and improve your personal finance situation.
There's nothing like the first few weeks of a new year to jump-start your personal finance resolutions.
First comes the after-Christmas hangover of credit card bills and gift returns.
But as we leave 2008 behind, there's never been a better year to start the rebuilding process.
… (1 comments)
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budget: Great Cheap Holiday Gift Ideas - 11/10/08 07:43 PM
This isn't the year to be overspending on your holiday gifts. If you can, you should aim to spend as little as possible. I know that not spending in the retail stores won't really help the economy, but it's important to get your own budget in spending shape.I suggested making holiday gifts this year. Or, take a photo and frame it for grandparents and parents or friends.Pam called the show with a great suggestion. She just bought $25 restaurant coupons at Restaurant.com for $2 each! We just used expiring miles to buy restaurant coupons there as well (so, no cash out … (5 comments)
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budget: Setting Up a Household Budget: How to Make It Work for You - 11/01/08 01:27 PM
Summary: As the economy tightens, more Americans may be thinking about their household budgets. Household budgets include major expenses such as rent or mortgage payments, but also smaller costs such as cable television. How can you set up a household budget? In this Think Glink column, Ilyce talks about tracking daily expenses to see what you're spending. Ilyce's advice includes using a money tracking software program such as Quicken or Microsoft Money and tracking expenses throughout the seasons and ideally, constantly.
When setting up your household budget, you have to think about big-ticket items, such as how much should you spend … (5 comments)
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budget: Adjust Family Budget to Afford Mortgage, Rent - 09/26/08 05:33 PM
What percentage of your family budget is your mortgage or rent check?
According to recently released 2007 census figures, 7.5 million Americans spend at least half their income on their housing expenses. That's 15 percent of all Americans, up some 400,000 from the year before.
For most family budgets, housing expenses combined with rising food and fuel prices is enough to break the bank.
"Rising unemployment, the continuing mortgage and credit crisis and rising food and fuel costs are causing people with good incomes to seek help paying their debt," said Suzanne Boas, president of Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of … (1 comments)
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