healthcare expenses

At least once  a year, if not more, you visit the dentist and doctor to make sure everything’s working properly – why not give your finances the same opportunity? As we approach the busy holiday season, it’s easy to let attention slip from personal finance. If you find yourself barreling toward the end of 2009 [...]

Understanding the many tax deductions can be nothing short of a minefield, and many taxpayers are unaware of the many deductions that can be used to legally reduce your tax bill. This article highlights just a few of the tax deductions that you can claim if your circumstances lend themselves.

Standard Deductions
A standard deduction varies depending [...]

It’s Open Enrollment time at most employers, the time when you get to choose your benefits coverage for next year. You will review your chosen options, and make changes to them as needed. It’s important to be familiar with last year’s benefits. You may get a summary, but can use your paystub to see what [...]

Asset allocation is an investing a strategy for maximizing gains while minimizing risks in your investment portfolio. It involves diversifying your assets among different broad categories of investments, such as equity, fixed income, and money market, etc.  By reducing your investment risks, you’re in a better position to meet your financial goals.
How Asset Allocation Works
The [...]

Welcome to the “Money Saving Hacks” edition of Money Hacks Carnival. We have over 60 submissions this week, so this is a fairly long carnival. Let’s start off with the editor’s picks, and don’t forget to check out money saving tips.

Photo by bitzcelt via flickr
Editor’s Picks

Smart Moves To Lower Your Health Care Costs posted at [...]

I finally took care of my parents’ whole life insurance policies and put them on a Premium Offset Proposal (POP) arrangement. Basically, this arrangement uses their policy’s current and accumulated dividend values to pay their premiums. Their death benefits and cash values will continue to grow, but at a slower pace. At the same time, [...]

Kent Irwin, who recently wrote a guest article: Is Suze Orman Right, Can You Be Your Own Financial Planner?, sent me a free license to use his eFinPLAN online financial planning software. In this post, I am going to provide you with my initial experience, and I will follow up with a second post to [...]

I applied to medical school in 1995, but I did not get accepted — so the more accurate question is “what if I got into a medical school?” What led me to this? I was reading Mighty Bargain Hunter’s post about how much a lady owed to get her medical degree. To become an emergency [...]