Blog

Many financially successful people are comparison shoppers. If you’re one, you pore over ratings in consumer magazines, read websites for reviews and compare scores of products before you buy even everyday products like coffee or toilet bowl cleaner. Yet chances are good you don’t use that same care when choosing a financial advisor to help manage your life savings.

April is National Financial Literacy Month – an entire month dedicated to underscoring the importance of learning, establishing and maintaining healthy financial habits.

Keeping your cool can be hard to do when the market goes on one of its periodic roller-coaster rides. It's useful to have strategies in place that prepare you both financially and psychologically to handle market volatility. Here are 11 ways to help keep yourself from making hasty decisions that could have a long-term impact on your ability to pursue your financial goals.

If you are preparing to change jobs, do you know what your choices are for managing the money in your current employer's retirement plan? Although many people choose to take a cash distribution, there are other options that may benefit you more.

As temperatures warm up, trees begin budding, and the days get longer, you probably throw open your windows and think about spring cleaning your home. As you tackle washing windows, cleaning carpets, and sorting out the garage, don’t forget to consider your finances. Check out these tips to successfully spring clean your finances. 

1. Reassess Your Budget

With the proliferation of investment and personal finance websites, investors have access to a boundless number resources and tools once only available to financial professionals.

Chances are good that if you turn on the prime time news on any given day or pull up your favorite newspaper on your iPad one of the top stories will relate to emerging risks around the world.

The saving versus paying off debt is an age-old quandary that has plagued people since the advent of consumer debt. Pose this question to a group of financial planners and the responses will be split, roughly down the middle. While there might be as many advocates for savings as there would be for paying down debt, the broad consensus will likely be that it really depends on the situation.

After several years of wallowing in financial upheaval caused by a severe recession and financial crisis, Americans are, once again, looking to the future. A renewed confidence has many people setting their sights on long term goals that, just a few years ago, may have seemed out of reach.

The annual meeting is rescheduled to sometime later this quarter and the family reunion is sometime next summer, but like certain holidays and your birthday you know you can always count on a few specific dates. It’s reassuring. One such day is Tax Day, AKA April 15. Yet, unlike a birthday this looming deadline tends to sneak up on you in the least enjoyable way.