Monthly Archives: December 2018

Please say you don’t have your important passwords written on a sticky note attached to your computer. Or a string of in-order numbers like 1,2,3, 4, 5. 6, 7 – a password real people actually use for real accounts, and possibly the most hackable password out there. Consider using phases rather that passwords they’re effective as passwords and easier to remember. Better still get a ”password manager”, like 1Password, which allows you to log into all your different accounts securely while only having to remember one password.

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How’s your credit? You might not know right up until you apply for a loan or a credit card – and that could be too late. FICO credit scores are used by 90 of the 100 largest U.S. financial institutions to evaluate consumer creditworthiness, and now you can see your own score for free. Start with your credit report – request it from the three credit report agencies, Equifax, Transunion, Experian. Federal law requires them to give consumers one free credit report every 12 months. Here are six ways to get your credit report for free:

1. Discover bank
2. Credit cards
3. Auto loans
4. Credit unions
5. Student loans
6. Credit counselors

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Dental care can be expensive, even if you have insurance. Here are five ideas for cutting your costs:

1. Try dental schools
2. Look for low-cost clinics
3. Ask for discounts and avoid unnecessary care
4. Keep an eye on coverage limits
5. Don’t skip preventive maintenance

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In this era of few cradle-to-grave jobs, employees have to be creative about their careers. Workers seeking flexibility may take on other moneymaking ventires – inventively dubbed ”side hustles”- to pad that bank account. If you want extra cash, there is an abundance of sites that can help you land different types of gigs:

• Fiverr: for free lance writing, translation, marketing, design, computer programming and similar projects
• Rover: to find dog-walking, pet/house sitting gigs
• Turo: to make money renting out your car to others
• Uber: to make money driving for others
• Uber eats: to make money delivering take-out food to people
• Airbnb: make money renting out your home, or part of it, to visitors

The possibilities are endless. But one tip to memorize, whatever your hustle: Tuck something away from each paycheck for taxes. Side hustles are not taxed up front as a full-time employee’s check might be, so set enough aside to cover taxes.

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Whether your young scolar is dreaming of Harvard or your local community college, parents know all to well that tuitiona rates have skyrocketed since the days when Mom and Dad went to college. No matter if your child is 4 or 14, the magic number for collegiate savings is 529. A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged savings plan operated by states or schools, and its funds grow federal-tax-free. Once it is set up make deposits small or large can be done in just seconds online. You may want to consult a financial adviser to help you choose a plan.

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No one can see the future- if we couldm we’d be buying the winning lotto ticket and placing a whopping bet on the NCAA tournament. But financial experts are generally in agreement that interest rates will only continue to head up, not down, 2018 and likely again in 2019. What does this mean for the average consumer? It’s a good time to pay down debt, since personal loan and credit-card rates might climb. Rising rates help help out those who have some cash to salt away, as CD and savings-accountyields should increase.

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Don’t confuse an EFY with the AFT. The AFT is the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, whereas EFT stands for exchange-traded fund, an investment fund on stock exchanges. Depending on your age, your buisness-school prof might not have covered EFT’s because they only came to the U.S. in 1993. Now they are a popular investment vechicle you should know about. Like an index mutual fundm an EFT typically follows the performance of a particular index: the S&P 500 Index or Nasdaq-100.

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Travel site Kayak.com recently released its 2018 Travle Hacker Guide, offering up to the year’s top destinations according to over 1.5 billion annual searches on its site and app. Not all of the choices are bargains, but Kayak also breaks down when to travel and when to book to save money. And if you are 62 or older, check out this list of seven great travel discounts on everything from trail travel to hotels.

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Online shopping can save you from going out in the rain, snow or waiting on long lines in the mall. Cash-back online portals such as Ebates and Swagbucks help you tap into rebates as you shop. It takes seconds to sign up, and then you have access to cash rebates – some as high as 40 percent – on goods from thousands of merchants.

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Budgeting is like brushing- just a little dedication in advance goes a long way. A program like You Need a Budget ($6.99  a month after fress 34 day trial) helps you give every dollar a job, and ensures that living paycheck-to-paycheck will be a thing of the past.

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