What you need to know to learn how to maximize benefits and get the open enrollment help needed to have a health benefit plan that will work for your needs
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How to Have a Year-End Personal Money Review /
The end of a year is a time for reflection. As you plan your end-of-the-year celebrations and start to plan your new year resolutions, you may want to consider taking some time to take a closer look at your finances. A year-end personal money review can help you reflect on the choices you made over the previous year and help guide you to make better financial choices in the new year.
Let’s take a look at what a year-end personal money review is and how it can help you have a better relationship with money:
Read MoreMost Common Investing Struggles (and How to Avoid Them) /
Hey reader, just a little heads up that I am not an investment advisor, and the following article is not investment advice.
Before I took my first investment course in college, I had a lot of assumptions about investing. Many of them were wrong. I thought you had to know a lot about individual stocks and companies. I believed it was much more complicated than it turned out to be. And I expected it to be so much more exciting.
Investing is kind of like film and television. The result might be sexy and shiny and cool. But if you’ve ever been on set, you know that the process of filming is usually pretty dull compared to the result. There may be some excitement, but the great majority of the time gets spent waiting around - a lot like investing!
However, lately, investing seems to have changed -- from the Gamestop chaos to the Dodge coin drama, to the general market run-up over the last two years, investing feels exciting. Ask anyone who has seen their investment balances go up over the last couple of years.
Read MoreThe Lazy Person's Guide to Building Wealth (Part 1): Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Index Funds /
The stock market can be intimidating for anyone just starting to invest. One of the most common fears new investors have is how to choose investments. Choosing a company to buy stock from opens the door to a myriad of frightening possibilities. What if that company isn’t disclosing their finances properly? What if I’m not doing enough due diligence before purchasing shares? Buying individual stocks also leaves you at risk of not diversifying your portfolio enough.
Read MoreThe Sequence of Savings /
The sequence of events is consequential when we cook a meal, tell a story or travel to a destination. Instructions and directions are ordered, stories have sequential acts and arcs that depend on events. It’s the way things are, we accept this.
The same thing is true in the world of saving and investing. The chronology for both how you save (and invest) and where you save (and invest) matters.
Financial Paradoxes /
Paradoxes are fancy literary devices that can teach us lessons through the use of logical contradictions. Examining them allows us to practice our ability to hold opposing ideas in our minds at the same time.
Read MoreSix Important Financial Lessons I've Learned While Writing A Book /
It's easy to complicate things; it's hard to simplify them.
"Earn money. Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Rinse and repeat."
This is the advice an old boss would give when asked to distill financial planning into its simplest parts. It's excellent advice. When I first heard him deploy the words that would become a well-worn mantra in my mind, it was the moment I realized how easy it is to complicate things and how hard it is to simplify them.
Read MoreHow To Be Awesome At Investing: Lessons From A Decade In Finance /
People always assume I am so deeply passionate and stoked about finance. Like I jump out of bed and get excited about interest rates. That's not exactly true. I am super stoked and passionate about helping people, feeling like my work matters and having autonomy over it. So when people ask me why I started The Hell Yeah Group, the answer is often that, " I looked inside of my tool box of skills and realized I had some sharp tools that all pertained to bookkeeping, running a small business and personal financial planning.” As much as I wanted to create a cool company that had nothing to do with finance, I had constraints: I needed to earn money and there was no denying the skills I had, no matter how uncool I thought it was. Not exactly visions of grandeur, more like shining a turd.
But I’ve really grown to love how my work makes me feel, regardless of it’s non-passion status. I want to share the industry-specific things I’ve learned and observed over the years that I think everyone should know.
Read MoreHow to Make Money: Use Skills to Solve Problems for Specific People /
Picture this. You’re back in 5th grade. You’re standing in a line with your fellow classmates, facing an open field. And you’re all about to be humiliated because you’ll now be ranked by your kickball skills.
There are two team captains and they’re staring you all down and sizing you up. The first picks start and of course, the kids with the most kickball skills are picked first. Then the kids with the moderate skills are picked. They don’t even need hard kickball skills, they can have skills like morale building, being a team player or not getting in the way of the star players. And then the last picks are the kids who might not only lack skills; they might be a liability. On the dusty field, it’s not about feelings or friendships, it’s all about skills. After all, it’s not called friendship ball.
Read MoreBig News: The Money Diaries Podcast! /
I’ve been a big fan of Refinery 29’s Money Diaries since I first heard about it. Up until then, almost all the articles I’d read about money were drier than Joshua Tree in August. They were boring, not relatable and the antithesis of a conversation.
Needless to say, I was stoked when I was asked to be a co-host for the new Money Diaries podcast.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been working closely with their production team, doing research and recording interviews with experts and new diarists with my co-host, Lindsey Stanberry.
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