Saving and Investing

As the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, we dig up our hopes and dreams and make some resolutions. Health-related goals are usually at the top of the list, but what about your finances? The health of your accounts, spending habits, and investments are just as important to evaluate.

If you’ve only just begun your career and are starting to collect a decent paycheck, the last thing on your mind is probably retirement planning. When you’re in your twenties and thirties, retirement can feel light years away, but it will get here much quicker than you can imagine. And when it does, you’ll want to be prepared.

For many Americans, the art of saving is something that they have yet to master. This is especially true for those who have just entered the workforce or have gotten their first good-paying job. The mantra of these young professional men and women is often to want to spend instead of saving, and it might be time that changed.

Whether you’re brand new to investing or you have an established portfolio, balance is seen as one of the keys to making the most of your investments. But what does a balanced portfolio look like? And how do you keep your portfolio consistently balanced? Here are the dos and don’ts of balancing your portfolio and some helpful tips to potentially increase your returns. 

This is it. You’re zeroing in on your retirement years. You’ve been planning this for decades, but are you really ready? If you’re five to 10 years away from retirement, it’s time to start getting specific about your plans after exiting your career. Here’s what you should be doing to prepare. 

When thinking about our physical health, it’s common for people to take a holistic approach—that is, we think about ways we can practice being healthy overall, like eating a balanced diet and getting an adequate amount of exercise. Keeping our bodies healthy means improving our quality of life.

When we’re young, we have so many lessons to learn—one of the most important being how to manage our money. If your kids are starting to enter the workforce, whether it’s a part-time job just for the summer or a full-time job after graduation, it’s essential they know how to practice healthy financial habits.

Money can be a point of contention for many couples. Between big expenses like taking vacations, buying a house, getting married or having children, relationships can be filled with tricky financial situations. Even trickier is if you and your partner have different views on financial matters—one of you is a spender and one is a saver.