We all have our bad habits. Mine is a sweet tooth. I know that I’d be healthier if I could quit eating sugar, but the vague promise of better health in the future pales next to the joy of eating a chocolate chip cookie right now. Fortunately, there is one thing that keeps me from bingeing on sugar every day: the cost.
Suppose you’re a homeowner with a hideous master bathroom. You’d like to remodel, but you don’t see how you can afford it. According to HomeAdvisor, the average cost for that job is around $9,400, and there’s no way you can squeeze that amount out of your budget right now. Then, one day, you get a letter from your bank or a
Suppose you’ve got a leaky toilet in your bathroom. After trying without success to repair it yourself, you call a plumber who gets the job done in an hour. Normally, this would leave you with a hefty bill to pay – anywhere from $45 to $150 for that one hour of work. But in this case, there’s no
House hunting is a bit like dating. Sometimes, you fall for the wrong person – or the wrong house. It’s not at all unusual to fall head over heels in love with a house that’s way out of your budget. You feel like you just have to have it, so you pull every string you can to get approved for a bigger mortgage. But
We all like to think of ourselves as rational consumers. When we buy Product A instead of Product B, we think we’re doing it because we’ve carefully weighed the pros and cons – price, quality, and so on – and decided Product A is a better value. And if someone asked us why we made this choice, no
Every day you make financial decisions. Some are minor, like buying a new outfit. Others are major, like deciding to start a new job. But all of them, large and small, can have an impact on your future. The problem is that you can’t always tell how your decisions will affect you in the long run. It’s only
Most of us could do with a little more money at the end of the month. Unfortunately, it’s hard to figure out how to squeeze savings out of a tight budget. If you read finance articles online, you hear about all kinds of saving strategies, from packing your own lunch to freezing all spending for a month. But how
Close your eyes for a minute and picture yourself at the age of 90, looking back on your life – and, in particular, your financial choices. Which decisions do you think you’ll be happiest about? Which ones do you think you’ll regret? Those are the very questions that Claris Finance asked 2,000 people in a 2016 poll. The
Once you’ve determined to buy a house rather than rent, you need to get approved for a mortgage. Then you need to go through a multi-week underwriting process that climaxes on closing day – the day your dream home officially becomes your home. The magnitude of the home buying process can’t be overstated. Statistically speaking, your
Whether you’re purchasing a prefab dwelling, building a new construction home, or planning to fix up an older house, you’re probably excited about the prospect of closing the deal and moving in. Not so fast. Buying a home is an expensive proposition – the biggest investment that most families ever make. While you aren’t required to cover the
Recently, we discovered the #1 financial perk for military families: the VA Home Loan Guaranty, commonly known as the VA loan program. It is designed to make homeownership more affordable for current and honorably discharged members of the Armed Forces and certain other service organizations. If you’ve joined the military and now want to buy
Whether you’re earning your degree at a local community college or living halfway around the world to save money attending a foreign university, you’ve probably considered pursuing internship opportunities in your field. You’re not alone. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Class of 2015 Student Survey, 62.8% of students in the class of
