Personal Finance News

When it comes to money, the issue can be a nagging source of resentment and tension. To keep a financial harmony in the relationship, couple need to learn to work together to create financial roadmap. Jon Dulin on Money Smart Guides details the 4 biggest money mistakes couples make and how to overcome them. Read and learn to avoid these mistakes such as “not going over finances joinly” and “keeping secrets” in order to maintain a healthy marriage. (moneysmartguides.com)

Budgeting allows you to identify wasteful expenditures, adapt quickly as your financial situation changes, and achieve your financial goals. Creating a budget will decrease your stress levels and help you prioritize your spending and manage your money—no matter how much or how little you have. Personal finance writer Laura Shin has a simple and flexible strategy of budgeting that uses the 50/20/30 guideline.

1. “Tally your necessary expenses, aiming to keep them under 50% of your take-home pay.”
2. “Aim to allocate 20% or more of your take-home pay to your financial priorities.”
3. “From the remaining 30% or less of your budget, set yourself a weekly allowance.”

(forbes.com)

People hate their commutes more than any other activity in their lives, even more than work, child care, and home chores. Now an astonishing human potential wasted on commutes as it gets longer than ever before. According to the U.S. Census Bureau it takes the average worker 26 minutes to travel to work, the longest it’s been since the Census began tracking this data in 1980. The Washington Post puts that into perspective: “There were a little over 139 million workers commuting in 2014. At an average of 26 minutes each way to work, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that works out to something like a total of 1.8 trillion minutes Americans spent commuting in 2014. Or, if you prefer, call it 29.6 billion hours, 1.2 billion days, or a collective 3.4 million years. With that amount of time, we could have built nearly 300 Wikipedias, or built the Great Pyramid of Giza 26 times — all in 2014 alone.” For 3.6 million American mega commuter, it’s even worse as commutes take  90-minute one way or waste an entire month sitting in a car or bus every year. (washingtonpost.com)

Greg McBride, a financial analyst for Bankrate.com, writes: “A recent Bankrate.com poll found that only a little more than half of Americans have more money in emergency savings than in credit-card debt. More troubling was the 21% who didn’t have either credit-card debt or emergency savings–meaning they are one unplanned expense away from high cost debt without any kind of safety net… Americans are chronically undersaved for emergencies, with Bankrate.com finding just 22% of Americans have enough to cover at least six months’ of expenses and that 29% of Americans have no emergency savings whatsoever. Month in and month out savings is the one area of financial security where Americans say they are less comfortable than one year ago.” Learning about personal finance would help people to address the issue of saving and spending. (wsj.com)

Google is testing digital wallets that can stay in pockets. Google product manager Pali Bhat describes the new way pay without having to even take smartphones out of their pockets using verification by facial recognition. “Imagine if you could rush through a drive-thru without reaching for your wallet, or pick up a hot dog at the ballpark without fumbling to pass coins or your credit card to the cashier,” Bhat said. “When you’re ready to pay, you can simply tell the cashier, ‘I’ll pay with Google.’ The cashier will ask for your initials and use the picture you added to your Hands Free profile to confirm your identity.” Using Hands Free digital wallets, people could pay without even pausing. (yahoo.com)

With the ever increasing access to credit cards, controlling your spending can be a problem. If you have problem with spending more than you can afford, there are 12 free apps to track your spending. Here are some of them:

• Mint: Helps users create budgets with numerous spending categories, warning users with brightly colored graphics when they are nearing the edge of. Also provides credit score access.
• Goodbudget: Recreates envelope budgeting of yesteryear for the digital world. Set a budget for each category and spend from that designated category. When the money run out stop spending.
• Personal Capital: In addition to sophisticated budgeting tools Personal Capital users can track investments and create models for retirement, college savings and other life events.
• BillGuard: Keep track of you spending by type, month and location. Also get free access to your credit score and other identity protection tools like data breach alerts.
• Wally: Invites users to input purchases and income and keeps track on a lively graphic interface. Manual input is made simpler with location tracking.

(forbes.com)

Aldi is the place to shop for groceries with rock-bottom prices, but they required customers to use debit cards or cash. Well, not anymore! Aldi is now accepting major credit cards — including Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express — at all 1,500 of its stores nationwide. The good thing is that by accepting credit cards with higher merchant fees, the price of its foods will not be increased. Aldi will take that credit card costs in order to expand their market. (cleveland.com)

TidBITS, Apple news for the rest of us, has a poll to find out popular Mac personal finance aps among the readers. The top spots belong to four editions of Quicken — Quicken Essentials, Quicken for Windows, Quicken 2015/2016, and Quicken 2007. Reader John F. Richter added that Quicken 2007 “does everything I need it to do very well. I have been using it from early versions to balance my check books, credit card accounts and maintain my assets and have 15 years of history accumulated. What I like about it is the flexibility of reporting to facilitate tax accounting, reconciliation of accounts, and asset management.” Other top personal finance apps include  Banktivity, Moneydance, SEE Finance and MoneyWell. Among the free apps for personal finance, the most popular apps are GnuCash, jGnash, Buddi, and moneyGuru. (tidbits.com)