Before Akbar Gbajabiamila became a pro football player and co-host of NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior,” he was a kid growing up in South Central Los Angeles with six siblings and immigrant parents. During that time, he formed ideas about money that he still carries with him today. “I had a counselor once tell me that
Personal finance
Photo by Hero Images via Getty Images When it comes to shoring up your retirement savings, “work longer” isn’t always the right answer. There’s no denying that staying at work has its perks. For instance, employees who are 50 and older can defer the maximum $19,000 into a 401(k), plus the catch-up contribution of $6,000
Ariel Skelley | Blend Images | Getty Images Market volatility can turn into a tax-savings play for savvy advisors and their clients — as long as they do it right. Tax-loss harvesting is a strategy in which investors deliberately incur losses in a taxable account by selling off investments that have fallen in value. By
Stan Litow The days of traditional retirement may be over. Potential retirees at the lower and middle end of the economic spectrum simply can’t afford to stop working, given the high costs of health care and housing, especially when you consider that only 1 in 3 Americans have access to retirement benefits through their employer.
Your 20s can be dizzying. You may feel you’re stepping off the ledge without knowing if you can fly. To make things more complicated, it’s time to get serious about money. That means getting a grip on spending and saving, and learning to invest. Investing is not just for rich people. It’s not just for
Thomas Barwick | Iconica | Getty Images Parents are spending more than on their children’s sports with the hopes that they will make it to the big leagues. And dads are often the ones likely to shell out the most cash on their children’s activities, according to a new survey from TD Ameritrade. Yet spending
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, December 19, 2018. Brendan McDermid | Reuters It appeared to be a painful start to the week for the stock market, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling more than 470 points at the open on Monday. Yet Carolyn McClanahan, a certified financial planner,
Young or old, it’s a good time to get a job. Those armed with a newly minted diploma will enter a job market with unemployment near the lowest level in 50 years and job prospects up significantly from just last year. Employers plan to hire nearly 11% more graduates from the Class of 2019 than
The nation’s consumer watchdog agency on Thursday sued the owners of two large credit-repair companies, accusing them of taking unlawful fees from consumers and engaging in deceptive and abusive sales tactics. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Utah, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau accuses CreditRepair.com and Lexington Law, their owners and various
Cynthia Thomas Reher is a veterinarian in Bellevue, Washington Source: Cynthia Thomas Reher Where did the actor Steve McQueen live as a child? Does brackish water have more freshwater than saltwater? If you can correctly answer questions like these, you might be done with your student loans sooner than you expected. Some 400,000 people have registered
Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images National Social Security month just ended, and it concluded with a sober reminder. The program’s trustees came out last week with their latest projections, reaffirming that the primary trust fund is on track to run dry in just 15 years. When depleted, the current “plan” for Social Security is
After paying into Medicare through payroll withholdings at work for many years, some people approach their eligibility age of 65 with a misconception that their coverage will be free. In reality, Medicare comes with a variety of expenses — including premiums, copays and deductibles. High earners pay more for certain premiums, and there’s no out-of-pocket
John Lund/Marc Romanelli | Getty Images Older workers have seen their wages come to a halt. That’s the takeaway from a new report by researchers at the Retirement Equity Lab at the New School for Social Research. Weekly earnings for workers aged 55 to 64 were only 0.8% higher in the first quarter of 2019
RichVintage | E+ | Getty Images If we could teach young people just one thing to improve their chances of financial success, it would be the concept of compounding. Only when your investment gains begin to earn investment gains of their own are you truly on the path to building meaningful wealth. Yet this message
Grant Taylor | Getty Images You’ve probably heard the saying “Birds of a feather flock together.” But you probably never thought that could apply to the mutual fund you’re invested in due to political bias. Yet that is exactly what research from Dr. Yaoyi Xi, assistant professor of finance at San Diego State University’s Fowler
M_a_y_a | E+ | Getty Images Brides and grooms aren’t the only ones racking up wedding debt. Their guests are turning out their pockets for bachelorette parties and more. Couples who got hitched in 2018 coughed up an average of $33,931 to make their special day a memorable one, according to TheKnot.com. Though newlyweds feel
Motherhood comes with many advantages; a higher income is not one of them. There is a gap between men’s and women’s earnings at all ages, but it is generally narrower for those just starting out and becomes greater over time, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s where parenthood comes in. For
Hero Images | Getty Images If your high-school senior didn’t make the cut at his dream college this spring, then a transfer might be in the cards. Just make sure you don’t botch it. On average, colleges offered admission to 62% of transfer applicants in fall of 2017, according to the National Association for College
A bill that would reverse some controversial moves made at the nation’s consumer watchdog could get a floor vote in the House in May, according to a letter that Democratic lawmakers received from their leadership late last week. The Consumers First Act, which was approved 34-26 by the House Financial Services Committee in late March,
Who is your financial role model? If you’re married and said your spouse, you may want to rethink your answer. The latest CNBC and Acorns Invest in You Savings Survey found that 20% of married men said “their partner or their spouse” when answering that question. But women, at 32%, are much more likely to