Personal Finance

Microsoft Money in Excel

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microsoft money excel

Once upon a time, Microsoft produced and supported a money, budgeting, and personal finance software called Microsoft Money. It was an attempt to compete with Inuit and its near monopoly in tax and finance software. It was one of the best personal finance software options out there, and it was free. While Microsoft Money had a hard core following, it never built a large following and was eventually abandoned by Microsoft who put out a final version sunset edition, and let everyone know that it was free, but there would be no more support. Microsoft Excel Money Template Microsoft is back with a template add-on for Microsoft Excel that offers the kind of personal finance management that used to come from its standalone software offering. By making MS Money into an Excel template instead of its own software, the Microsoft Money team has to support and update a lot less. You have to be a Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family subscriber in order to get the Money in Excel template. Like Mint has done for a long time, Money in Excel will automatically pull in your transactions and keep them updated via a third-party called Plaid. I had …

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Real World Retirement Planning

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travel when retire in style

If you’ve read much in the personal finance world, or even just the occasional news story from the business section of your local paper, you are probably well aware of the non-stop stream of headlines about how people are not prepared to retire. Chances are you have visions of old people shut up in their homes clustered around a single candle for light and warmth. But, is this reality, or just great financial copy? A recent Marketwatch article reports on a survey where almost 80 percent of retirees found it easier than they thought to adjust their lifestyle and spending for retirement. This matches more closely with my experience as a financial advisor than the alarmist headlines do. Some real world retirement planning is all you really need. Retirement Crisis for All? As is so often the case, the reality of finances is very individual. As a result, generalizations are often inaccurate for large swaths of people, even while being correct for many others. When I was  a Certified Financial Planner, the reality is that I had a lot more clients who were planning for retirement than those who were actually retired. I never did a financial plan for someone …

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How To Start Retirement Savings

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retirement planning how much

One of the things that comes up in financial planning is that getting all of the information and facts can be difficult. This, all too often, leads to financial paralysis where you don’t end up doing anything at all, because you don’t understand all the details. Ironically, a lot of the information that ends up being “too much,” is for edge cases that don’t affect the average American saving for retirement. How To Start Saving For Retirement Now Retirement savings, investing, and planning is one area where complicated topics can needlessly paralyze people from taking action. Occasionally, financial companies themselves accidentally cause this confusion. Not long ago, I was talking with someone about retirement savings. The issue, for this particular person was the commercial talking about “Your Number.” If you remember this commercial, the point was that you should know how much money you will need when you retire. The goal, was to get you to schedule an appointment with one of their financial advisors or brokers to find your number. Since the person I was talking to didn’t know his number, he was stuck on what to do for retirement. The ironic part is that you don’t need to …

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Is SquareTrade a Good Deal

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squaretrade warranty

SquareTrade has been bought by Allstate. Allstate is an insurance company that does auto, home, and life insurance. They now do item protection plans like SquareTrade used to do. I first wrote about SquareTrade  back in 2009. At the time, I was overjoyed at the concept of warranties from Square Trade. If you don’t remember, 2009 was the era of incredibly overpriced extended warranties from electronics stores. It turns out that companies like Circuit City were selling merchandise at a tiny profit, and making all of their money by having their salespeople push high cost extended warranties on anything. Even worse, when you tried to collect on that coverage, it turned out that your warranty wasn’t actually from the company you bought it from, but some business you never heard of, and that didn’t really care what you thought about them, their service, or their coverage. Is SquareTrade a Scam? First off, SquareTrade is a legitimate company. It is now part of Allstate and they seem to be doing away with the name in favor of Allstate Protection plans. They’ve been in business for a long time now and have plenty of satisfied customers. However, there are some complaints about …

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Restart Finances with Restarting Economy

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digging out coronavirus

As parts of the country start moving into reopening after coronavirus lock downs, it’s time to start thinking about how to restart your own personal finances when the restrictions end. So, how do you restart finances while the country is restarting economy? Going Back To Work Despite all the news reports, protesters, and talking heads on television, the decision to go back to work or not is a deeply personal one rooted in your own personal circumstances. Review of Zelle Scam Legit or Safe? First, assess your own personal health risk situation. As many reports have noted, certain people seem to do worse than others when it comes to contracting the coronavirus. Although there are numerous reports of otherwise young, and healthy people ending up in the hospital, the odds still look the worst for those who are older, or that have preexisting conditions. If you can’t safely return to work, it is time to start looking into what your possible options are. Coronavirus Unemployment Be sure to check out unemployment programs. Even if you may not have qualified in the past, the rules have been changed, and benefits are more generous with a $600 boost for many unemployed people. …

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New Section 199A Business Tax Deduction

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It’s time to dig into how the new Republican tax law is actually going to affect you and yours this coming tax season. While it has been a while since the law was passed, it takes some time for the IRS to iron out the actual rules. Plus, you have to wait for the year to go by before you file your taxes. So, here we are, heading into 2019, and we’ll be doing our 2018 taxes. There are a lot of changes, but one of the biggies is Section 199A. I’m going to take a quick look at the Section 199A Deduction as it applies to a freelancer, or someone who owns their own side business. Section 199A Tax Deduction As noted at the time, the Republican tax bill of 2017 was passed quickly in order to keep any opposition from building up and stopping its passage. As a result, it wasn’t very well thought through, and chances are that there are more than one or two bugs in the system. The IRS itself tried to iron some of those out as it created definitions, and rules and regulations, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about exactly …

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Is Leasing a Car Bad?

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new car lease

There are far too many people out there insisting that certain things are “bad” in every case. For example, some very prominent financial personalities will tell you that you should never lease a car. While car leases aren’t necessarily a great deal all of the time, neither is getting a regular car loan, or even buying a car for that matter. If you don’t know what you are doing, and work with people you can’t trust, you can get strung out in any number of ways during a car purchase. The lease isn’t the only potential problem What Is a Lease? So, what exactly is a car lease? When you lease a car, you change the mechanics of the standard auto loan, but at the end of the day, both processes are a way to borrow money to buy a car in exchange for monthly payments. Check out my Credit Karma reviews When you buy a car using financing, you can either get an auto loan, or an auto lease. Most people are at least familiar with the basics of a car loan, so let’s start there and move onto how a lease works. Auto Loan With an automotive loan, you …

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Fed Raises Rates On Schedule

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The Fed has been telegraphing a September (2018) rate hike for quite some time now, and they followed though with another 0.25 increase today. They also anticipate a December rate hike still this year as well. I mentioned last time, this increase marks the end of the “free” rate increases that really didn’t do much to affect the economy as the rates were laughably low so much so that getting any commercially available rate meant a lot of “padding” in the rate from the Fed rates. This rate increase pretty much ends that. From here on out, ever quarter percent increase goes right into the economy as an increasing headwind. Between political uncertainty, a burgeoning trade war, and an economic expansion getting long in the tooth, it’s my opinion that the Federal Reserve is acting recklessly here pushing ahead with its rate increase timeline without any evidence of inflation, and no evidence of wage growth. In other words, the Fed is raising rates despite there being almost no inflation. Traditionally, this does not work out for the American economy. Every time the Fed starts raising rate for reasons OTHER than fighting inflation, the result is a recession, often a big one. …

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Interest Rates Rising Into the End of the Year

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defenses economy

The Federal Reserve did not increase interest rates at its August 1st (2018) meeting. That was widely expected after the increase from the pervious meeting. Traditionally, the Fed tries not to raise rates in back to back meetings unless it feels like the economy is getting away from them. It allows the markets, and just as importantly, the economic data The Fed relies on to adjust to the previous hike before implementing another one. Rate Hike In September The Federal Reserve Bank did try and telegraph that it is currently looking at another rate hike for September. While the Fed did not raise rates, it did repeatedly say how “strong” the economy was, and how strong all the economic data was. Check out our Digit App review. And, for the first time in a long while, inflation is actually running near the Fed’s so-called target rate of 2%. While the Fed’s actions seem much more like 2 percent is a ceiling, rather than a target, recent data does suggest that inflation is running solidly near the two percent mark, so action is likely warranted. Will Higher Rates Trigger the Recession? Here is where things get tricky. While the Federal Reserve …

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Contribute a PERCENTAGE to Your 401k

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Sometimes, it’s easy to let the small (but BIG) stuff get lost among all of the other information and knowledge out there. I’m just as guilty as anyone else, and that’s why I’m ashamed that there are already hundreds of other articles on my personal finance advice blog before I got around to writing this one. It comes from a friend who was “running some things by me” who showed me that his 401k contribution is $750. “Why isn’t a percentage instead of fixed amount,” I said. “What difference does it make,” he said. Oh boy. Have you seen my Credit Karma reviews?  Set a Percentage to Save Into Your 401k You’ve already heard it a million times before. There are fancy names for it, like “paying yourself first,” or whatever you like. But, in order to save, to really save you need to get money out of your hand, before it ever gets into your hands. It’s just human nature. We spend what we make. That’s why, no matter how old you are, and no matter how many times you’ve said it before, it still seems like just another hundred, or thousand, dollars a month is all you would need …

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