3 Simple Ways to Boost Your Credit Score

If you are trying to rent a house, buy a car, or make another major financial decision and are worried about your credit score, you’re not alone. Most adults in America cite a low credit score as their number one financial concern. While credit scores can be a confusing concept and it might seem impossible for you to boost a bad score, it is possible. Your unique credit situation determines your score, so there is no universal formula for raising a low score, but these 3 simple tips can help.

Make Payments on Time

One of the easiest yet most important ways to boost your credit score is by ensuring that your outstanding payments are always made on time. A helpful tip that many adults utilize to help them stay on top of bills and important payments iis setting bills to autopay each month, so that there is no room for forgetfulness. If you find that you are unable to pay a particular bill or expense on time, be sure to reach out to your credit card company right away to discuss your options. Missing payments with no explanation can cause irreparable damage to your credit score.

Limit New Applications

Every time you apply to a new credit card or program, your credit score is impacted. While this might not sound like a big deal to some, it can have a major impact on your credit score, particularly if your score is already low. Additionally, credit inquiries can build up and have a negative impact on your score over time. Opening a new account or line of credit will also decrease the average age of your accounts, which could further damage your score.

Don’t Take Out New Loans

Although it can be frustrating to wait to take out new loans for major purchases until your credit score improves, doing so is important in order to build your credit score up as you pay off existing debt. Although it might sound like a good idea to take out a small loan to help pay for a big purchase like a new car or a home renovation project with the help of keyinteriors.us, new projects will be easier to take on financially if you can complete them once your credit score is higher.

Boosting your credit score can be difficult, but it is not impossible. Use these 3 simple steps to begin understanding your credit score and how it can be improved.

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For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

Post Title How Can You Save Money While Going Back To School?

If you are thinking about going back to school, there are a lot of important points you need to think about. Going back to school can indeed be expensive; however, there are also opportunities for you to save money. Therefore, it is important for you to take a look at a few important points below so you can avoid taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. Remember that there are free online colleges available as well, so you may want to explore a few of these opportunities to see what they might be able to offer.

Do Not Overlook the Online Option

First, it is important for you not to overlook the online option. There are a lot of people who are looking for schools that will put them on a physical campus. Even though you should think about this option, you need to compare this to online colleges as well. For example, if you can go back to school online, you do not necessarily have to spend money on transportation, parking, or room and board. Furthermore, you might even be able to keep your job if you go back to school online. That way, you are in control of your schedule. This is one of the best ways you can save money when you go back to school.

Always Fill Out the Financial Aid Form

Next time you should always make sure you fill out the financial aid form. There is usually a financial aid form provided by the school. If you fill out this form, you may qualify for certain tuition breaks from the school. Furthermore, there is also a federal form you should fill out as well. Usually called the FAFSA, filling out this form could qualify you for certain forms of financial assistance from the federal government. There are plenty of financial aid opportunities out there, so you need to make sure you explore all opportunities available to you.

Look for Scholarship Opportunities from Third Parties

Finally, you should also make sure you consider scholarship opportunities from third parties. Some of the biggest companies in the world have scholarship opportunities available for students who meet certain qualifications. Before you apply for these programs, you need to take a look at the qualifications to make sure the program has been set up for people like you. Then, make sure you fill out the application closely. Even though it can be competitive to qualify for these scholarship opportunities, you never know what you might turn up. In some cases, these programs could provide you with thousands of dollars you can use to go back to school. This is one of the best ways you can save money when going back to college.

Find the Right Degree Program To Meet Your Needs

These are a few of the most important ways you might be able to save money when you go back to school. Going back to school can be a challenge, but it is also an opportunity to find fulfillment. If you can find the right educational opportunity for you, you should be able to place yourself in the best position possible to be successful when you graduate. Furthermore, going back to school does not have to be as expensive as many people think. If you can explore some of the opportunities above, you might be able to save money when you go back to school. Remember that if you attend an online college, you may be able to keep your job even when you go back to school.

The post How Can You Save Money While Going Back To School? appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

MoneyAhoy.com is Four Years Old!

MoneyAhoy.com is now four years old!  It has been an awesome ride over the past four years, and I am happy to still be blogging!

I had two main goals when starting this blog which were:

1. Help other people improve their personal finances
2. Help educate myself so that I could improve my own personal finances

Over the past four years, this blog has really helped me to achieve both of these goals.  With my post and video How to Start Your Own LLC, I have helped hundreds of people start their own business.  With my free Ebook Stock Market Investing for Newbies, I have helped hundreds of would-be investors learn how to invest in the stock market smartly.  I estimate that my other articles and videos have helped folks save tens of thousands of dollars over the years.

MoneyAhoy.com continues to grow and grow as it has helped me and others.  The rest of this post will reflect back on the past year and look to the future.  But first, if you’d like to check out the other old birthday posts, you can find them here:

• Happy Birthday MoneyAhoy!
• MoneyAhoy.com is Two Years Old!
• MoneyAhoy.com is Three Years Old!

Top-5 Posts for MoneyAhoy.com – Year 4:

Here’s a listing of the top most popular posts that were written in the past year in terms of traffic:

1. Start and Setup an LLC on-line in Less than 6 Minutes! – This was an older post, but I continue to work on updating it to keep the information relevant.  So far, it has helped hundreds of folks to start their own business and save hundreds at the same time!
2. How to Start a WordPress Blog with Bluehost – I created this mega-post to help folks understand how easy it is to start their own blog to explore their passion.
3. How to Save Money on Heartworm Medicine for Your Dog – Here we explain how you save save thousands of dollars over a lifetime by taking a DIY approach to your dog’s heartworm medicine.
4. How to Make Money with a Blog – This popular article gives a deeper insight how you can use a blog to generate quite a bit of additional income.  It is pretty detailed and has really helped many folks pull back the curtain on how to make money blogging.
5. Monthly Money Reports – These Monthly Money Reports bring readers back month over month to see how I am making, saving, and investing my money each month.  They are a fun way to learn about my opportunities and mistakes as I work to improve my personal finances.

Money Results Over the Past 4 Years

This is my favorite part of the birthday recap – we can get down and dirty with some numbers!  We’ll look at how blogging on MoneyAhoy.com has helped me to make, save, and invest more money over the past year.  It is pretty tough to calculate the exact amount of impacts, but I will do my best.

• Saving – MoneyAhoy has helped us to save a considerable amount each year by having us focus on things we could easily eliminate from our routine and non-routine spending.  Here’s a quick summary by year:
  • Year 1 Savings – $4,500
  • Year 2 Savings – $13,000 ($17,400 total)
  • Year 3 Savings – $15,500 ($33,000 total)
  • Year 4 Savings – $17,800+ ($54,000+ total)

It is pretty incredible, but MoneyAhoy.com has helped our family to save over $54,000 in total over the past four years!!!  Fantastic!!

• Making – I have made quite a bit of spare pocket money to invest through side hustles over the years.  MoneyAhoy has helped to fuel the passion to drive forward and push myself to make more side-hustle money.  Again, here’s a summary by year for side-hustle income:
  • Year 1 side-hustle income: $2,005
  • Year 2 side-hustle income: $7,050
  • Year 3 side-hustle income: $9,900
  • Year 4 side-hustle income: $12,400

MoneyAhoy.com has seen some nice growth over the years as you can see.  I am not getting rich or anything, but it has pushed me to go out and earn a total of $31,000+ in side-income.  Monthly income from the blog is at the point now where it can pay the mortgage each month which is kinda cool :-).

• Investing – After losing gobs of money trying to “trade” the market in the 2008 downturn, I was really gun-shy about continuing to invest our hard earned money.  My wife and I were continuing to invest into our 401(k) retirement accounts, but I was gun shy about any other type of investing.  MoneyAhoy.com helped me to get over the fear of investing by forcing me to learn more about investing and the ins and outs of the stock market.  It also forced me to develop an investment routine and get “timing the stock market” out of my system.  Here’s a breakdown of the amount we worked to invest each year and the amount of dividends we collected (this is just in our private investment account):
  • Year 1 – $38,500 invested with $850 in dividends
  • Year 2 – $139,000 invested with $2,900 in dividends
  • Year 3 – $113,500 invested with $8,800 in dividends
  • Year 4 – $104,000 invested with $12,200 in dividends

We continue to reinvest all dividends into the stock market, and nearly all of my take-home pay is invested in the stock market (my wife’s paycheck covers our bills completely).  I continue to remain the most proud of how MoneyAhoy.com has pushed us to continually invest for our long-term financial success.  Over the past four years, we have invested a total of $415,000 in the stock market and received ~$25,000 in dividends!  This is through a combination of our IRAs, 401(k)s, and private investment accounts.  The coolest part is that our annual dividends will continue to grow and grow as long as we continually reinvest them to take advantage of compound interest!

As you can see, MoneyAhoy.com has drastically change our financial lives for the better.  It has helped us work to increase our net worth by an EXTRA ~$110,000 over the past four years ($54K savings + $31K side-hustle + $25K dividends) higher just because of this blog and the personal finance discipline it has helped us to bring into our lives.

Some days running a blog feels easy, and other days it feels like a great deal of work.  Sometimes it is hard to believe I have been at it for four years.  Other times, it can be a bit stressful wondering if I will hit the goals I have set for myself each and every month.  If I could go back and do it all over again, I don’t think I would change a thing.  To me, that’s the best measure of if something has been worthwhile :-).

What’s Next for MoneyAhoy in Year Five?

So far we have been hitting the goal of having our average monthly side-income (dividends + MoneyAhoy.com) hit at least $1,000.  This is enough to cover the house payment with a little left over.  After reviewing the goals I set forth for year four of MoneyAhoy, we did so-so.  Here are the year four goals:

• Continue to look for ways to save more money on our routine finances.
  • COMPLETE – our property taxes have naturally worked themselves lower, we got into a cheaper cell phone plan, and we figure out how to save a bunch of money on our dog’s heartworm medicine.  Nothing ground-breaking, but we have made some progress.
• Continue to work to increase the presence of this blog and make more side-hustle advertising income.
  • COMPLETE – it looks like revenue from MoneyAhoy has grown about 40% vs. the previous year.
• Continue to invest ~100% of my income each month (my wife’s income is devoted to paying 100% of the bills).
  • COMPLETE – we have been doing this other than saving a bit for my wife’s new van fund.
• Continue to promote and expand our new HealthierDay.com health website.
  • POOR PROGRESS – our health and fitness website did not take off very much.  We also did not put a whole lot of time into it.  So, it is just floundering at this point.
• Work on another side-hustle project.  Currently I am focusing on learning and making a computer/cell-phone game using Game Maker Studio.  This really seems to fit well with my skills, interests, and previous background/jobs.  We’ll see how it pans out
  • POOR PROGRESS – as if I didn’t already know this, making a computer game takes a TON of time and effort.  It is fun, but can also be very frustrating at times.  I came to the conclusion that I could see a much better return on the investment of my time through blogging.  So, I basically canceled this goal.

I think that’s a pretty decent track record for the past year.  It wasn’t a 100% home run, but we did see some great progress.

Now let’s talk about goals and plans for year five of MoneyAhoy.com:

• Convert my wife’s old 457b into her IRA.
• Achieve annual investment dividend income > $15,000.
• Achieve 1,500+ subscribers on my MoneyAhoy YouTube channel.
• Achieve monthly average MoneyAhoy.com revenue of >$1,500.
• Really focus on putting out more quality YouTube videos with a goal of 4+ per month.
• Get our routine monthly expenses down below $2,500 a month.

Final Birthday Thoughts

I really hope that you will continue reading MoneyAhoy.com for year five to see what sorts of progress we can make toward the above goals.  As you can see, this blog has helped us increase our net worth by an extra $110,000 over the past four years!  I hope that in this process it has helped you to make more money, save more money, and invest your money better than before.  I look forward to many more years of blogging fun, learning, and adventure!

If you have any suggestions on how I can make MoneyAhoy.com even better, please leave a comment below or send me an email.

The post MoneyAhoy.com is Four Years Old! appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

8 Steps to Get A Successful Crowdfunding Campaign Going

So you want to launch a crowdfunding campaign but don’t know where to start? Good news. Here’s how you can get your campaign going in a few steps. It might not be easy, and it will take a lot effort. Don’t be faint of heart, you can do this, and here’s how.

1) Build Your Team

Every campaign needs a team to run like a well-oiled machine. There are important roles for a campaign team. The specific titles of team members can vary depending upon their responsibilities. Whether you have a paid staff, or volunteers, without the team there would be no campaign.

2) Brand It

Your business is composed of details, graphics, rules and regulations, and most importantly a mission. If your campaign doesn’t coincide with your mission, your branding is off. Branding is the most important thing a business has when it presents itself to the public, especially when the business needs money for a campaign.

Come up with a brand strategy for your campaign. How will you present it? What fonts and logos will you use? How will you implement your business in the course of action for this campaign? This is where you build what you will take to the public. It’s essential for a successful crowdfunding campaign.

3) Set Goals

According to the experts at BDO, “Crowdfunding has become an intensely popular method for small entrepreneurs to raise the funds necessary to make their ideas for products a reality.” So why does your business need this crowdfunding campaign? You will need to set realistic goals to ensure your campaign will be successful. Plan what your company or new startup business needs from this campaign. Goal setting requires hard dates of when each goal should be achieved by.

Raising money requires money. You’ll have to spend money on materials to get your campaign out there. You should take into account the amount needed, and make sure it follows the amount you want to raise for your goals.

Your goals should also be more than just money. You want to reach your target audience. The demographics in which your campaign was designed for. Make goals for the statistics of your campaign as well.

4) Share What It’s About

This is the step where your hard work in preparation and branding meets the public for the first time. The launch of a crowdfunding campaign is where you introduce the campaign, and make people aware and gain their support. You’re at the step where you tell people about your campaign.

This is the step where the your new website or blog becomes up and running, and open to the public eye. The infographics, flyers or brochures are out there for people to see. A social media strategy can create awareness through posts on various social media platforms. Emails are sent. The campaign is officially launched and public.

5) Show People Why They Will Benefit

To make people care and support your campaign, you have to show them why they should care, or how they will benefit from giving you their support. In order to do this, you must learn from other successful campaigns.

One successful campaign would be the campaign to resurrect popular children’s TV show Reading Rainbow” where they raised almost $3.5 million dollars. The campaign had more than 76,000 people that believed in Reading Rainbow enough to give their support.

You can learn from other campaigns that were successful and achieved their goals to see how you can reach yours.

6) Don’t Give Up

If you don’t want your campaign to fail, take into account lessons learned from campaigns that failed. Do you research to understand what launching a campaign means for your business, and why it’s vital to your business that you don’t give up mid campaign.

It’s okay if you don’t reach all of your goals. Preparation is key to running a smooth campaign, but in the event that a crisis occurs, you should have already come up with a back up plan if your campaign starts to fail. Pure dedication and strict management of the crowdfunding campaign will help you.

7) Have an Outreach

Get face to face with your target audience. It’s one thing to have a video for the campaign, send out emails and post flyers. If you can afford an event in the budget, gather people together in person.

Hosting an event will bring your crowdfunding campaign to life. Have a live speaker that can reach the crowd and enable on the spot fundraising. Put names to your audience, and allow them to see faces behind the campaign.

This helps the audience of the event to understand why they should donate to your campaign and where their money is going.

8) Put it in the Books

Whether your campaign was successful, or if it failed, you still need proper documentation of the campaign. To end the campaign, the statistics, the funds and anything else required during the campaign should be organized into a company document. If for any reason you need to go back and see what happened during the campaign, you’ve got it in the books.

8 Steps to Get A Successful Crowdfunding Campaign Going – Final Thoughts

Running a successful campaign takes hard work and effort. Without strategic planning and steps to reach your goals, you can’t run a campaign. That’s how you can launch a successful crowdfunding campaign for your business.

Anum Yoon is a personal finance blogger and writer. She created and maintains her personal finance blog Current on Currency. You can subscribe to her blog newsletter right here for her weekly updates.

The post 8 Steps to Get A Successful Crowdfunding Campaign Going appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

Create Your Own Money Saving Plan Using Pareto Charts

Are you interested in saving money, but don’t know where to start?  Do you want to make sure you focus your money saving muscle in the area where you will actually see the most benefit?  Do you just love creating charts and graphs in Excel?  

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then read on to find out how you can create our own money saving plan using pareto charts!

What Are Pareto Charts?

Have you ever heard the saying that 20% of the people create 80% of the problem?  That’s basically the Pareto rule in effect.  This “rule” is found to work well in nearly all facets of life.  I think the same also holds true with our normal monthly budget.  We typically have 20% of our monthly items accounting for 80% of our total household budget.  If you can learn to focus on improving in these “heavy-hitter” areas, you can make a real dent in your monthly expenditures!

Now that we understand the basic idea of Pareto, we can put this to use with charts to really help visualize where our money saving opportunities can be found.  I did some of this work for our own expenses, and it really did help us save a bunch of extra money by focusing on big items.

How to Create a Monthly Spending Pareto Chart

Creating a monthly spending Pareto chart is a straightforward process that should only take a few minutes.  The steps to create your own monthly spending pareto chart in Excel are:

1. List out all your monthly expense categories in one column (groceries, rent, electricity, water, etc.)
2. Track you spending in each category for several months.  I recommend recording data for at least three months to get a good average.  You can place this data in columns 2-4.  If you would like to look at even more than three months, then go for it!
3. Calculate a monthly average for each category and place this in the last column (column 5 if you are working with 3 months of data)
4. Sort the entire list of categories, monthly expenses, and monthly averages using the monthly average column.  Sort this descending (this will place the highest expenses at the top of the list)
5. Highlight your category column and your monthly average column and click the bar chart button.  You now should have a generic monthly spending pareto chart.

When you are all done, it should look something like this:

Monthly Expenses Pareto Chart

Pareto Charts in Excel

I have a YouTube video ready to go below that that shows you just how to do this.  Check it out now!

OK, So I have My Monthly Spending Pareto Chart – What Now?

Now that you’ve created your monthly spending Pareto chart, you can start to analyze it for money saving ideas.  You will want to focus much of your money saving brainstorming in two areas:

1. quick hitters – these are expenses that may be pretty low down on the list but would be easy to reduce.  Easy quick hitters examples for money savings are switching to a cheaper cell phone plan, getting rid of cable, and cutting out short term disability, cutting back shopping at Big Lots to name just a few…
2. big hitters – these are big expenses that soak up a majority of your hard earned dollars.  These will typically be difficult to reduce in the short-term, but in the longer term you want to create plans to minimize these if your goal is to save as much money as possible.  Typical big hitter items could be: student loans, mortgage interest, eating out, groceries, daycare, etc.

Why Focusing on Big Hitters is Important

Using a Pareto Chart for your monthly expenses can really help to put your monthly expenses into perspective.  Look at the example below as to where we were spending our money just a couple of years ago.

Old Expenses Using Pareto Chart

You can see that if we were really going to improve our savings, we really had to focus on getting childcare and home interest down.  Those were huge expenses for us!

As I mentioned up above, getting the spending down on your big hitter items can be tricky.  These are typically monthly expenses that are quite hard to reduce or get out of such as a mortgage or student loans.  Looking at reducing spending in these areas when the chance arises can really pay off huge dividends in terms of your net worth in the long run.  Our monthly spending Pareto showed us that we were spending a huge amount on daycare and housing.  When we moved to Georgia for my job, my wife and I made it a priority to downsize our home and plan out a work/life balance where we could minimize daycare costs.  

By paying close attention to our monthly spending Pareto chart, we were able to reduce our monthly expenses by more than $1,500 when the time came to relocate!

Create Your Own Money Saving Plan Using Pareto Charts – Final Thoughts

Creating your own money saving plan using Pareto charts can be a great way to get your monthly expenses back on track.  A money spending Pareto chart helps you to put your monthly expenses in perspective and gives you several ideas where you can save a ton of money.  By looking for quick hitters and big hitters in your monthly spending, you are sure to develop a money saving plan that will payoff big time!

The post Create Your Own Money Saving Plan Using Pareto Charts appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

7 Habits of Highly Efficient Professionals

Success can be measured in hundreds of different ways. When asked about it, some professionals might look to their salary, their list of publications, their charity’s social progress or perhaps to the fleet of sports cars parked in their garage and tell you yes, without a doubt in their minds, they are successful.

Despite how anyone determines whether or not they are successful in their professional lives, or how that success might compare to someone else’s, most successful people will agree that at least part of their success is due to their high level of efficiency. Keep reading to learn seven ways you can encourage these productive habits in yourself.

1) Dedicate Yourself to a Vision

A key to creative, professional and personal productivity is vision, and being able to envision exactly what you’re working toward. Without vision or purpose, you’re going to spend an awful lot of time paddling about aimlessly in the proverbial river of life. As Jason Fried wrote in his bestseller REWORK, “When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.”

The real secret to being effective in life is simple. You simply need to know exactly what you want, and pursue that goal as you see it in your mind.

2) Eliminate Distractions

Being a workaholic isn’t necessarily a good thing; it all depends on how you’re getting your work done. If you can do something in a minute that might take the next guy five minutes to complete, then it doesn’t matter if you work a four-hour day, just as long as you’re accomplishing your goals. Try to find efficiency in your daily routine. Creating efficiency is the same thing as eliminating distractions. Don’t get caught up in e-mail, Facebook or all the other time-wasters on the internet. Instead, focus on the end task and nothing else.

3) Talk the Talk

Communication is everything. To be an effective participant of a meeting or team, you’ll need to communicate effectively. Nobody likes superfluous responses that can’t get to the point fast enough.  Otherwise your ideas and input might not be considered for what they’re worth, and then what?

Another part of “talking the talk” is being easy to reach. This is especially true at this day and age of hyper connectivity. E-mails, phone calls or text messages should be dealt with as they arise, but if you’re working on something at a critical stage, eliminate all communication that is unnecessary.

4) Take Another Look

Sometimes, especially if a problem seems unsolvable, taking a few steps back can make a world of difference. Truly successful people have the ability to create new perspectives for themselves, so they can learn to see issues, people or situations from several angles and allow for a more coordinated response. Rob Mericle, the president of a commercial real estate company, has dealt with countless obstacles over the years. But he’s always managed to successfully complete projects simply by making it a habit to create new perspectives. It’s rare in this day and age that a problem is black-and-white. Effective professionals are able to recognize the many shades that lie between.

5) Be Flexible

A branch that can’t bend with the wind will break. Flexibility and the ability to adapt in uncertain scenarios and make spur-of-the-moment decisions can make a real difference in reaching one’s goals. Be ready to embrace change as it comes.

If you allow yourself to be open to opportunity, then opportunity will make a habit of presenting itself.

6) Cool Down

Living a life of high productivity or high stress can, without a doubt, leave people a little high-strung or tightly wound. No one is able to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and walk away unscathed. You should be able to detach from your work, and find both time and an activity that will allow you to recharge through the rehabilitation of your body and mind. You’ll find that if you allow yourself time to recharge, you’ll do better work whenever you are working. The brightest flames tend to burn the hottest and the quickest, but there’s no sense in burning yourself out.

7) Organize

Organizing yourself doesn’t necessarily mean having a clear, empty desk and ten pencils sharpened and neatly arranged. Being organized is a state of mind, and it will manifest itself different for everyone. Some people find productivity only in a clean, open space, while others need every surface of their work area to be covered in quotes and images before they can find inspiration. The bottom line is that a successful individual knows how, when and where their best work is done.

7 Habits of Highly Efficient Professionals – Final Thoughts

A successful life is hard to measure. Remember that as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, a man or a woman is only a sum of their actions, not a sum of their plans, hopes or wishes. If you want to be efficient and successful, you’re simply going to have to do it. Most people out there would be millionaires already if wanting it was all you had to do.

Anum Yoon is a personal finance blogger and writer. She created and maintains her personal finance blog Current on Currency. You can subscribe to her blog newsletter right here for her weekly updates.

The post 7 Habits of Highly Efficient Professionals appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

How to Protect Your Retirement Savings

How often do you think about retirement? Probably not much, if you’re anything like 68 percent of Americans. In fact, even if your employer offers a 401(k), chances are decent you haven’t even touched it.

Who can blame you? Retirement is still 20, 30 or even 40 years from now, and 401(k)s aren’t worth the trouble. Why worry about tomorrow, when you have enough problems on your plate today?

Well, it’s precisely because retirement is so far into the future that you should be worried. Anything can happen between now and the point when you’re officially considered a “senior citizen.” Taxes can go up, interest rates can go down and economies can collapse. As anyone who’s lived through those events will tell you, it’s not pretty.

Luckily, it’s not too late to save for retirement. For starters, you can follow this general guide to making your senior years as cushy as possible.    

Check Out Your Retirement Plan Options

Your 401(k) isn’t the only option. You also have the traditional IRA, the Roth IRA and other plans you may be eligible for. In case you’re overwhelmed by all those choices, TIME has a table of retirement plans.

Keep in mind, however, that many of these plans require you to meet a certain set of criteria, so check those before you apply.   

Match Your Company’s Contributions

If your company puts four percent into your 401(k), put in four percent. If they put in six percent, put in six percent too. Since contributions are pre-tax dollars, you’re essentially reducing your taxable income today.

That’s not to say you won’t pay taxes in the future. After all, your 401(k) is tax-deferred, not tax-free. Even so, the taxes you’ll pay once you hit retirement age will be far lower than the taxes you would’ve paid today had you chosen not to match your employer.

(Re)Allocate Your Assets

Obviously, you can’t put all of your income into your 401(k). If you want to build a solid retirement plan, you’ll need to decide which of your assets should be tied up in what, and how much.

Take cash, for example. It’s the easiest financial resource to tap into when you’re in a pinch. But when prices go up at a rate higher than the rate on your savings account, you lose purchasing power. For that reason, you also need to put part of your cash into bonds, stocks or commodities.

Have a Conservative Outlook

When we say “be conservative,” we’re not suggesting you don’t take any risk at all. Taking risks is necessary to make money in any economy. However, those risks need to be calculated.

Picture your worst-case scenarios. Factor in your current financial situation, the general state of the economy and history. What would happen to your finances if you get disabled? If prices go up by a certain rate? If the government decides to raise taxes for any reason?

Given what you know, decide which financial instruments can help you weather those worst-case scenarios. Check how easy it is to bail out of an investment in case you read the cards wrong.        

Get Expert Help

Unless you’re already an expert, the idea of making financial projections 10 years into the future may be too difficult or time-consuming. If you don’t have the time, energy or resources to study the technical side of asset allocation, get a financial planner on board.

Of course, you shouldn’t choose just any financial planner. This person should have tons of experience to back them up. If you’re lucky, you can get someone like Keith Springer, who’s had 20 years of experience as an investment advisor and has made multiple appearances on CNBC, Bloomberg, CBS and other high-profile media outlets.   

How to Protect Your Retirement Savings – Over to You

Now that you have a general blueprint for retirement success, let’s hear your thoughts. What strategies have you implemented, if any, to save towards retirement, and which ones worked — or didn’t work — for you? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!  

Anum Yoon is a personal finance blogger and writer. She created and maintains her personal finance blog Current on Currency. You can subscribe to her blog newsletter right here for her weekly updates.

The post How to Protect Your Retirement Savings appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

10 Ways You Can Invest in Yourself

Sometimes we can be so focused on our finances as the key to a better life that we can forget about some of the other things that make life worth living. Sure, managing your money the very best you can, saving for retirement and working to increase your income are all super-important, and achieving financial independence can give you much more freedom to enjoy your time.

Still, it’s important make the proper emotional investments along the way to create the richest possible life for yourself. Here are 10 great ways to invest in yourself that go beyond your checkbook.

Keep Learning

Continuing education is a great way to sharpen your skills and prepare for that big promotion or new career, but traditional university work can be expensive. Your education is a crucial investment to make, but you can also think outside the box for how to get the skills and knowledge you need.

Try free online courses, or teach yourself a new skill with a trip to the library for resources. Your learning doesn’t have to be related to your career. Sometimes apprenticing yourself to a local craftsperson can provide a major quality-of-life boost as you learn to do something you’ve always wanted to try, but haven’t had the time to explore. No matter what you choose to study, keeping your mind sharp will pay big dividends in the future.

Face Your Fears

Sometimes fear can keep you from the learning and exploring you need to do to in order to move ahead. Make a goal to overcome your biggest fears once and for all. To do this, identify what’s holding you back: social anxiety? Fear of failure? Once you know what you need to work on, you can come up with a plan to face your fear. Whether you decide to sign up for hang-gliding lessons to overcome a fear of heights or take a public speaking class to become less shy, taking steps to face your fears will make you feel more powerful. That confidence boost will echo through other areas of your life in positive ways.

Stay Healthy

Good health allows you to enjoy all the other aspects of your life, from spending time with loved ones to climbing a mountain. Vow to invest at least 30 minutes per day on physical exercise to stay fit. You’ll have more energy and sleep better, which will boost your overall happiness. So much of your health is in your own hands, so taking steps to eat right and exercise has an ROI that rivals anything you could spend money on.

Take Risks

Though this may seem to contradict the previous point, it’s not about taking risks with your health. It’s about being willing to take risks that could pay off with future opportunities. Consider making an investment that is a bit riskier than your normal tolerance, or take a risk in expressing your opinion in the next meeting at work. You never know what you can achieve if you don’t stick your neck out a bit. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Be Your Own Boss

One major key to achieving financial independence is to think like an entrepreneur. What can you do right now to make money on your own, without having to worry about an employer telling you what to do? Whether you have things to sell or a skill to share, all you need to do to get started is to place an ad on Craigslist and see what happens. As you build your own entrepreneurial spirit, you’ll find that opportunities keep coming your way, and you may be able to seize freedom for yourself sooner than you ever expected.

Be Kind to Yourself

Sometimes, in the quest to save our money for a rainy day or retirement, we can lose sight of the little things that can help boost our morale. It’s OK to treat yourself once in a while, whether you enjoy a gourmet meal, a weekend getaway or a new pair of shoes. A little splurge won’t break the bank and can keep you motivated to be fiscally responsible for the long haul.

Embrace Your Mistakes

Life isn’t perfect, and neither are you. When you start taking risks, sometimes you’re bound to fail. Allow yourself the space to take a breath and learn from your mistakes instead of beating yourself up. When you take the time to figure out where you went wrong, whether in a relationship, investment or work project, you won’t get stuck in a rut of repeating the same mistakes later. Your errors can end up being your best teachers if you take the time to analyze them.

Follow the Golden Rule

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Treat others the way you would want to be treated. Being kind and courteous to friends and strangers alike will make you feel good, and your positive personality will pay you back as people respond well to you in kind. There’s no quicker way to happiness than to build quality relationships with others.

Surround Yourself With Positive People

Nurturing positive relationships is important, but what about those people in your life that do nothing but make you miserable? Whether it’s a dysfunctional family member, a bullying co-worker or a terrible frenemy you’ve outgrown, sometimes you need to cut ties for your own mental health. If a toxic relationship is bringing you down, quietly walk away. You don’t have to interact on social media or accept any more invitations. No confrontation is necessary to let someone nasty slip out of your social circle.

Make Time for Creativity

When you make time for creative projects in your life, you cultivate a feeling of satisfaction in your accomplishments that’s hard to beat. Whether your enjoy building things, performing or writing poetry, your creativity is a big part of who you are as a human being, so embrace it. Cultivating your creativity can also help you to become a better problem solver and strategic thinker, and your projects could even lead you to start your own business in a related field.

10 Ways You Can Invest in Yourself – Final Thoughts

Remember: Your 401(k) isn’t the only thing you need to invest in to have a good life. Invest your time and emotional energy into yourself, and you’ll see a big payoff in your quality of life.

Anum Yoon is a personal finance blogger and writer. She created and maintains her personal finance blog Current on Currency. You can subscribe to her blog newsletter right here for her weekly updates.

The post 10 Ways You Can Invest in Yourself appeared first on MoneyAhoy.

For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

Why Should I Invest in the Stock Market?

If you are already familiar with what type of return on your investment you can expect out of the stock market over the long run, let’s see what investing can do for you.  If you are new to investing and would like to learn more about stock market investing, check out my awesome book on Amazon –  Stock Market Investing for Newbies.  Now, let’s get into some specifics!

Why Should I Invest In the Stock Market?

What you ever stopped to ask this question: what do I really want most out of life?  Most of us get so busy with our day-to-day routines that we often do not take time out to plan where we want to be five, ten, or twenty years from now.

Now, back to the question of what you really want out of life.  I bet I can guess your answer, and I have not even met you!  Here is my guess: All of us want to spend more time doing the things we love and less time on doing the things we do not love.  Is my guess correct?

I have never met anyone who wanted to spend more time raking leaves, cutting the grass, washing clothes, or working in a job they hate just because the pay is pretty good…  Time is our most precious asset.  Once it is gone you cannot get it back.  How can investing help us to achieve the goal of spending more time doing the things we love?

Look at it this way: Investing is simply a tradeoff – give up a little bit today to get significantly larger rewards down the road.  Would you give up $100 today if it meant 40 years from now I’d give you back that same $100?  Of course not!  No one would take that deal.  What if you could give up $100 today to get back $500 in 40 years?  Would you agree to that deal?

Now, what if you gave up $100 today and got back $4,500 in 40 years?  I have a feeling most folks would take that deal as long as our basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing were being met currently!  The whole point of investing is the concept of delayed gratification.  The way compound interest works, the more disciplined one is at putting money aside and not touching it, the bigger your reward will be at the end of the “investing rainbow.”

What’s the Reward of Delayed Gratification?

Sure, maybe the flashy among us who are weekend drivers will buy that $80K sports car.  With easy financing when we were in our twenties or thirties, just about any type of purchase is possible.  However, if we are willing to forgo these types of luxuries and invest the $80,000 instead at an 11% rate of return, over the course of 40 years we would have over $5,200,000!  If we assume inflation remains at 3%, you’d be able to purchase 20 sports cars with that amount of money when you hit your sixties!

The main criticism I hear for investing is that you should enjoy your money while you have it.  “You never know when you’re going to go,” is the most argument argument I hear over and over again.

This is true – none of us know when our lives will end; however, you are much more likely to live until you are old.  If you fail to invest and plan for your retirement, you may find yourself working as a greeter at a big box store.  Is this really the future you want for your sunset years?

Investing while you’re young and forgoing certain luxuries means that you’ll have more money in the bank as you age.  This gives you more options on what direction you want your life to take.  Consider just some of the options available to you if you become an intelligent, disciplined stock market investor versus a spend-thrift:

• early retirement
• fund a your children’s education
• travel the world on sabbatical
• take a career change or go back to school
• start and fund your own business

Why Should I Invest In the Stock Market? – Final Thoughts

The point of this post is to illustrate that having more money gives you more options.  Having more options increases the flexibility you have to take control of your life and live it the way you want.

Learning how to invest in the stock market can be the key to winning back your precious time as your wealth begins to grow over the years.  Having more wealth means that you will be more able to spend time on the things you love and less on the things you do not absolutely love!

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For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com

We Paid Off All Our Student Loans!

We finally did it! After nearly 10 years of constant monthly payments, my wife’s school loans are now finally paid off!  We’ve been looking forward to this day for years and it has finally come!

How Much Were the Student Loans?

When my wife graduated with her doctorate about 10 years ago, she had a total of about $27,000 in school loans. Yikes!!!  I know that’s not much these days, but it sure did seem like quite a bit at the time she graduated! Hell, most kids have $80K in loans or more these days! That’s enough to buy a fancy new BMW M3!  Regardless, for us $27,000 is quite a bit of debt

What Was the Interest Rate?

Here’s where we got really lucky. My wife’s loans were only a ~3% interest rate.  Also, these loans didn’t start to accrue interest until after she graduated. One other bonus is that my wife had several thousands of dollars forgiven because she worked in the public sector for 5+ years.

We could have actually paid off her loans years ago, but because the interest rate was so low we felt it was better to take our extra money and invest it.

What Was the Payment on the Student Loans?

All of this boiled down to a monthly payment of just about $255 a month. Not a big deal on the monthly budget, but still a constant monthly drain and something that anyone would be happier without

How Does it Feel to Be Rid of Student Loans?

It feels great! I mean really awesome! We are now completely debt free (other than our home loan)! I think my wife actually feals even better than I do about it. She really couldn’t believe it when she clicked the final button to make the last payment!

What’s Next Since the Student Loans are Paid Off?

We’re going to Disney World!  Just kidding  Actually, we do have plans to vacation in Disney this year, but that has nothing to do with paying off her student loans.

Some would say that we should now start paying off our house early. Nope! We think it’s much better to take the risk and try to achieve higher returns out of the stock market. Our home loan interest is right at 4%. Once you figure in tax breaks, that equates to about a 3% risk free rate of return if we were to pay the house of completely. We’d rather take the increased risk and try to get 6%-8% out of various investments. This is a change in heart for me as I’ve come to realize the power of compounding interest.

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For more saving money, making money, and investment ideas go to www.MoneyAhoy.com