Dear Liz: My husband and I have been aggressively paying down our debts and plan to be debt free by this time next year. We’re devoting about 20% of our income to debt repayment and saving about 6% (not much, I know, but we’re young and just starting out). We were building an emergency fund […]
Recent Blog Posts
News you can use right now
Here’s a round-up of good recent stories tied to Tax Day (deadline’s tomorrow) and one of my favorite topics, credit scores. Can’t pay? Amy Feldman’s article “What if you can’t pay your taxes?” for Reuters walks you through what to do if you’re facing a big bill, rather than a refund. Bottom line: don’t ignore […]
How I outsource my life (Part III)
The homes in our Los Angeles neighborhood tend to have small back yards. We’ve struggled to make ours liveable for most of the 14 years we’ve been here. We wanted to have space to entertain and relax, as well as room for our dog to run and our daughter to play. What we wound up […]
Beware your financial planner
Financial planner Allan Roth has a pretty good piece in the latest issue of AARP the Magazine on “The Two Faces of Your Financial Planner” (renamed “How to Choose Your Financial Planner,” a much snoozier headline, in the online version). Although it’s geared for older readers, it should be read by anyone who gets professional […]
New tool helps you compare financial aid offers
You’ve gotten the college acceptance letters, and their accompanying financial aid offers. But how do you really decipher how much college will really cost you? More than 1.5 million students and their families are wrestling with these issues, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to help. The bureau just announced a tool that can […]
How not to owe half a million in student loans
Most college students graduate with manageable student loan debt, but there are plenty of exceptions. Marketplace Money highlighted one case last week: the medical student who expected to owe nearly half a million in loans by the time he graduated. I was in the studio with host Tess Vigeland and senior producer Paddy Hirsch to […]