Personal Financial Advice from a former Certified Financial Planner
I’ve gotten several requests for a Quizzle review. Quizzle is an online financial service that offers, according to the bold face type, a free credit report, free credit score and various financial tools. Whenever someone points me in the direction of a personal finance company like this the first thing …
Is it just me, or are you getting a lot more offers for real credit repair these days? Legitimate Credit Repair Is there a way for someone to do legit credit repair? After all, there are all of these people out there selling credit repair services, so there has to …
There is a lot of misinformation out there about the Equifax security breach, or hack. I wrote up a quick blurb the night I heard about it to try and help, but now it’s been a few days and it’s clearer what is happening, and what people are thinking. What …
If you are wondering whether to be worried about the Equifax hack, the answer is yes. You should be worried. However, you do not need to panic. By now, you should probably have some rudimentary credit monitoring whether it comes through a free credit score service like Credit Karma, or …
I spend a lot of time talking about whether or not the free credit scores from CreditKarma, or the WalletHub free credit scores, or the credit scores from Credit Sesame are “real credit scores” or not. The reality is that most of the time, it doesn’t actually matter. If it’s a …
Did you see commercials for a free credit service from Experian. They do something clever in that they de-emphasize the free credit score idea and instead play up the concept that “credit is a skill” rather than a number. This is actually true advice, even if it isn’t what most people …
Welcome to 2017! Relax. Take a deep breath. There. Feel better? Good. Then let’s jump in. Finances Updated in 2017 With a new year, come some new numbers. There will be updates to the maximum 401k contributions, income limits for Roth IRAs, and others. Plus, there will be adjustments to …
It’s hard to get real, hard data on various finance things sometimes. After all, for “real world” data, I can only go on what I have most of the time. That’s hardly definitive for everyone. There is always data “out there,” of course, but it’s hard to know what to …
You are probably aware that all three credit bureaus are required by federal law to provide you with a free credit report annually. Each year you can request a free credit report from Transunion, Equifax, and Experian. You may think that the best way to get your free credit report …
The old maxim, “If it is too good to be true, it probably is,” holds up especially well in the world of personal finance. The concept of getting free credit scores has been mined by con-artists and scammers repeatedly. Unfortunately, most of these scams are perpetrated by well known companies …