Understand Wedding Customs Before You Spend Your Money On Them

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The summer months represent the peak of wedding season in the United States.

Every year approximately 2 million Americans get married (CDC), and they spend an average of $27,800 on their wedding (The Knot).

While Americans routinely decide to create their own customs such as the recent craze of choreographing a dance for the wedding party at the reception, we also follow customs that have been handed down through generations.  However, a closer look at how these customs came to be may free you to not follow tradition and save yourself some money.

Many of today’s wedding customs are rooted in the fact that weddings used to be less about love and more about business.  Simply put, weddings were a business arrangement, and this can be seen through a variety of customs we still embrace.

Consider the following wedding customs:

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Stocks Erase 2012 Gains and Links

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After an unexpectedly low jobs report the stock market dropped more than 2% on Friday.

Added in with the losses from the rest of the month of May, put the S&P 500 down 9.1% for the month.  Nearly all of the gains in the S&P 500 from the rest of the year have been wiped out — the index is only up 1.63% YTD.

If you’re nearing retirement, you just took a significant hit to your portfolio and should adjust accordingly.

However, for those with many years left to retirement the idea of the stock market going down should be soon as a good thing because the same amount of investment will buy more shares at lower prices than they would have at the beginning of May.

It can be difficult to see stocks as being “on sale”, but that mentality can help you significantly in your retirement planning.  These great reads will help you, too:

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The Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards

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Do you find yourself traveling often, perhaps for work or pleasure?

A travel rewards credit card is a great way to earn extra perks or get a little back for your trips.  Traveling can be expensive and a travel rewards card can go a long way to earning something back for your spending.

Do you like benefits such as:

  • Earning free nights at hotels;
  • Earning free flights;
  • Not paying foreign transaction fees;
  • Earning free car rentals;
  • and more?

The cards below offer a variety of these benefits as well as others.

These are the best travel rewards credit cards that I’ve found (if you know of others, please let me know so I can add them!).  Look through each of the cards and see which benefits mean the most to you.

Make sure you are actually going to use the benefits!

If you aren’t taking advantage of what a particular card offers then you are wasting the usefulness of a travel rewards credit card.  Some of these have annual fees, so you need to make sure you are making up for that fee in the card’s use (yes, I’d prefer there were no fees, but these cards will quickly pay for themselves if you are using the benefits).

Finding the best credit card to fit your particular traveling needs is a great way to maximize your credit card and your spending.

Take a look at the list below and find the best travel rewards credit card with benefits to match your travel habits.

Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards

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