All in Financial Education
Give a man an education and he will build a new world, but give a man a loan and you can own that man forever.
It’s been 10 years since I graduated from grad school. I still proudly hang up my diploma because it put me on a better path for my career and my income. It was also FREE. No loans, no debt, no soul to be sold. With that, I thought I might offer some ways to help reduce debt if you are a college student or have a child that is about to head to college.
“A woman who dies without adequate life insurance should have to come back and see the mess she created.”
Momma (and dads out there), I want to talk about life insurance for a sec. I know it’s not easy to talk about life insurance because we associate it with death and death is never an easy subject, but this is real life and part of a good financial plan is to protect your loved ones should something happen to you. I’m not an insurance salesperson but here’s my perspective on it.
One of the big questions that many parents ask when it comes to funding a 529 Plan is, what happens to the funds if my child doesn't end up going to college? So imagine all of these years, you’ve been saving for college. Family and friends have contributed to the account. The account has grown thanks in part to your early saving and the stock market growth. Then the time comes for your child to go to college, but they end up not needing the funds for a host of many reasons. One may be that they have received a full scholarship and have no need for the funds, or they’ve decided not to pursue the traditional 4-year university route and instead go to trade school, or they’ve decided to take a break from school so that they can figure out what they really want to do. The good news across all of these scenarios is that you don’t have to forfeit any of the funds in the 529 Account.
I opened a 529 account 3 months after my husband and I tied the knot in 2013. Call it intentional planning. Call it planned savings. Call it whatever you want, but it was just something I felt I needed to do given where we were financially. Having children also felt like our next big step after marriage.
Earlier this week, we celebrate National Coming Out Day or NCOD. National Coming Out Day is an annual LGBT awareness day that celebrates and supports individuals who publicly identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. Many use this day as a way to share their coming out stories, support others who may keep their identity a secret, or celebrate those who are now sharing their gender identities and sexual orientation. Your identity has an obvious impact on your relationships, but it can also affect other aspects of your lives, like your job or career, and your finances.
So whether you are part of the LGBTQ+ community, or are an ally, how can we build a more LGBT-friendly investment portfolio?
Teachers are one of the single largest class of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher, yet existing systems shortchange teachers when it comes to retirement planning and security.
According to a survey by EdWeek.org, more teachers are thinking about leaving now than before the pandemic. Younger teachers are more likely to leave the profession which means many of these teachers will not qualify for a pension. If they have only been relying on the prospect of a pension and not investing in alternative retirement plans, they’ll have some catching up to do.
In this post, we will look at why a teacher’s pension may not be enough and what investment accounts teachers can self-fund to ensure they have enough in retirement.
It's important to keep this mind especially when it comes to money. Money conversations must start at home. Parents and guardians must accept the responsibility of exposing their kids to money concepts before media and peers influence that money mindset. If there’s fear, secrecy or anger in the money conversations now, that can get carried over to adulthood.
Financial issues can affect anyone and everyone. While many of today’s financial concerns affect the LGBT community the same as everyone else, LGBT Americans can also face another set of additional issues that can pose obstacles to one’s financial wellness and planning.
In this article, we will briefly cover 5 financial concerns that the LGBTQIA+ community may face
A big question that often comes up is should I be investing even if I have debt?
We all have different tolerance for risk, but a little number crunching will show that paying off debt AND investing will be more beneficial for you in the long run.
Today, I'm sharing with your some tools to help you decide for yourself.
Do you love makeup and beauty products?
Makeup and beauty products typically depreciate the moment you open it. They expire and it’s hard to get your money back on them. If you use them, then you can get your dollar’s worth, but for many of us, some of our makeup languishes at the bottom of our drawers especially if we have a lot of options to choose from. That’s just the nature of a consumer product. Today though I want to introduce you to the concept of buying beauty and cosmetic stock for every cosmetic product you buy. The goal is to buy assets that have a potential to appreciate which means money in your pocket for the future.
It’s important to realize that our kids need parents who are physically, emotionally and financially stable so by extension, we need to take care of ourselves first and that means investing in our well-being. Here are 7 financial moves that will benefit your children.
“What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year.” - Vern McLellan
Happy New Year!
2020 wasn’t exactly the year we all hope it would be. Many of us were pushed into situations that we didn’t desire, but the great thing about humans is that we are all very resilient beings. While a date and a year change shouldn’t stop us from making changes, it does give us permission to make the changes that we’ve long wanted to make, but never did because of fear: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of alienation and fear of the unknown.
This list focuses specifically on the financial moves you should make for a more successful 2021.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
How do you measure success?
In business, this is usually based on Key Performance Indicator (#KPI) set up at the beginning of the year and evaluated throughout. KPIs keep you focused on the goal at hand.
But, what about your personal finances? How do you know you are managing your finances well? Earning more is great, but are you using your money efficiently?
Well, enter the Personal Finance KPIs. It's a list of metrics that you should track and work to improve as the years go on. A little Google search will result in multiple iterations of this list, so you’ll have to find which ones work for you. Each one of us have different financial goals after all, so one metric may work for one person for a few years, but after a while, it may be time to retire an old metric and add a new one.
“...the currency of the South was the slave”
This month’s book is “The Color of Money - Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap” by Mehrsa Baradaran. It covers the history of Black banking and the role of racism in the economic independence of the Black community.
Today, on every socioeconomic level, Blacks have significantly less wealth than whites. The book explains how the racial wealth gap was created that continues to affect millions of families in the United States. There were also many laws and policies like the GI Bill, the Homestead Act and the FHA that denied the Black community the opportunity to advance and economically prosper.
Many Americans are beginning to receive their stimulus checks as part of The CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act to relieve some of the financial pressure brought on by the pandemic.
Depending on your income level and dependents, you may have already received the money from the US Treasury. People who filed a 2018 and 2019 tax return and had direct deposit information with the IRS will receive the check first with paper checks going out in May. If you are unsure if you will be getting a check or how much, use this handy calculator to find out. Scroll down to CARES Act Rebate Calculator or check the graph.
The money is being given with no strings attached.
Here are the many ways you can use this money wisely.
“It turns out you can give your money to a project positively impacting the world with the goal of earning a financial return.
Can you grow your money while investing in positive change for people and the planet? I believe that we can and this book The Do Gooder’s Guide to Investing by Adrian Reif provides a roadmap on how we can do all that.
The word “investing” can sometimes get a bad rap because it’s associated with Wall Street, but it’s absolutely possible to invest in affordable housing, renewable energy and local communities and still grow your money. The Do-Gooder’s Guide to Investing provides a comprehensive list of these investing options. Even if you are not ready to invest yet in these organizations, I highly recommend reviewing and learning more about the organizations that Adrian lists as it will give you some hope about the future.
A money journal can be a diary of sort that tracks your daily spending habits. It may be a list of expenses. It may be a list of money goals and your progress. It may be a list of debts. For many, a money journal can just be a ledger of money coming in and out. Instead of relying on an app, Excel or monthly statements from a bank or credit card, a money journal can be a record of accounts. A money journal can be started on any plain notebook. The most important thing with a money journal is to do it consistently. This is where you will learn to see patterns on spending or doing deeper, patterns on emotional spending. It’s imperative that you review your journal often and write down your thoughts and feelings about recent money moves. This will inform you of where you money mindset is at this point in time.
You, right now, have a choice: you can let money control and define your life or you can control it. - Erin Lowry, Broke Millennial
This month’s book is Broke Millennial by Erin Lowry. You can read more about Erin on her blog, brokemillenial.com.
The title of the book can peg it as a book specifically for Millennials, but I disagree and encourage you to pick it up if you are looking to up your financial knowledge no matter what age you are. It’s not a book on investing or retirement, which I think makes it better. It’s a comprehensive on the basics of money mindset, credit, student loans and debt. The content in this book provides a good foundation for better money management and eventual wealth creation.
"There's no good idea that can't be improved on."
Kaizen is the Sino-Japanese word for "improvement". It’s a word that has been floating around in the business world for some time now, but now you’ll see it being applied to self-improvement and personal finance.
Today’s post is a little different. It’s a roundup post of money advice for teachers and educators. For majority of my posts here, I’ve written from the perspective of someone who was in the corporate world. By nature, being in the corporate world has it’s own unique system, terminology, career ladder, retirement, etc. After reading the TIME piece “13 Stories of Life on a Teacher's Salary” late last year, I was aghast at how little we pay and pay attention to the people that are shaping our children’s future.
To that effect, I think it’s equally important that teachers also take it upon themselves to do what they can to get themselves financial independent.
