Financial Planning Truths

I always recommend that people do their taxes early, but this year it is even more important, and it ties into my last article. With all the tax changes in the past year I am certain a large number of people severely under withheld and are going to owe a lot more than they are expecting at tax time.  Considering over 60% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings account this will cause some financial emergencies. If you do your taxes now you still don’t have to pay until April 15 th which gives you two months to figure out how to come up with the money. If you wait until April 14 th to figure out what you owe and learn of an unpleasant surprise you may be in trouble. This could complicate the problem by adding penalties and interest to your unexpected situation. In the rest of this article I will explain who is at the greatest risk for this surprise and why. But even if you are not at risk it is always wise to do your taxes early. If you have money coming back...

I apologize for taking such a long break from posting, but after all the stories about the number of people living paycheck to paycheck during the government shutdown, I decided to start posting again. If you are a regular reader and have followed my advice you may not need this one, but please pass it to anyone you know that might; because; clearly, there are a lot of people that have not gotten the message. The first post I made on my bog was titled Pay Yourself First . Not doing so is a disaster waiting to happen. It is important you practice this philosophy all the time, not only to save for retirement but also to make sure you have something in case of an unexpected interruption in your income stream or other financial emergency. The economy is rolling along quite nicely at the moment, yet a lot of people still are not putting anything away for a rainy day. I feel empathy for all the government workers that went without paychecks but hope this is a wakeup call for them and f...