A Personal Finance Blog for Regular Folks
If you are engaged, one important task on your wedding to do list is to create a wedding registry.
You may spend a few hours with your fiance choosing a store to register for your wedding gifts and actually picking the items to appear on the list. Some people find the process so overwhelming that they continue registering over the course of a few days.
It happens to the best of couples.
You start out deeply in love, and then, with the stresses of life, child rearing and career growth, you don’t spend enough time together.
You grow apart.
You start to get upset with one another and find flaws. (Ironically, often the traits that most endeared your spouse to you in the beginning are now the very traits you find most irritating).
It is at this point that many couples consider getting divorced.
According to Dr. Heller, a licensed psychologist in Massachusetts, “about 10% of all marriages end in divorce during the first five years and another 10% by the tenth year.”
Divorce can seem like the easy way out.
[Read more…] about Will Divorce Make You Happier? The Emotional and Financial Implications of Divorce
If you are like most Americans, you have probably felt the pain at the grocery store cash register when buying your family’s groceries.
While the increase in the price of gas most often makes the nightly news, the increase in the price of groceries hits consumers’ wallets even more so, especially if you have a family.
If you don’t want to resort to being an extreme couponer buying processed foods for pennies on the dollar, there is another way to save—grow your own garden.
[Read more…] about Grow Your Own Garden This Summer to Save at the Grocery Store
Every other week, it seems, we hear dire warnings about how much debt our college students are burdened with when they graduate.
Indeed, more than ½ of college students take out student loans, and the average student loan tab for a graduating senior is just over $25,000. Coupled with a rough economy and a general lack of financial knowledge, recent college graduates are struggling financially like never before.
Yet, it hasn’t always been this way.
Many of us just grew up knowing that student loans have, and will be, available, but that hasn’t always been the case.
If you have a soon to be graduating high school senior, she has hopefully been accepted to several schools and is in the processes of deciding which to accept.
Your high school students should be blissfully debt free right now, but as soon as she decides what school to attend, that may all change.
Far too many students decide what college to attend because they like the campus or the atmosphere or because they want to move far from home.
Ideally, before she even begins to apply to colleges, you, as the parent, should sit down with her and discuss finances. This conversation should occur no later than before your child makes a decision as to what college to attend.
Most parents would like to pay for their child’s entire college education, but that is often not possible due to the current economy and rising tuition costs.
Chances are, if your child attends an expensive university or private college, she will have to take out student loans, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loans. The cold reality is that she may be paying these loans for the next 10 to 20 years, and she may have to delay important life events such as getting married, having a child and buying a home all because of her student loan debt level.
[Read more…] about Have a Student Going Off to College? Teach Your Child about Student Loan Debt
