Your credit report is incredibly important. Not only do potential lenders check it when you’re trying to secure credit, but landlords, cell phone companies, utility companies, insurance companies, etc. have also been known to check your credit prior to doing business with you.
Given the above, it’s in your best interest to check your credit [...]

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As a followup to yesterday’s post on how to get out of debt, I wanted to share with you an interesting article about debt collection practices in Spain…
Shame and debt
Apparently Spain has very lax debt laws, meaning that it can be difficult for lenders to recover outstanding debts by taking deadbeat borrowers to court. Thus, [...]

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ShareBuilder, which is a subsidiary of ING Direct, recently introduced a new promo code that offers a $25 bonus for new account holders (paid out after your initial investment). In case you’re not familiar with them, ShareBuilder allows you to buy stocks for as little as $4/trade. They also let you buy round dollar [...]

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On the way home from work the other night, I heard a radio commercial touting a debt reduction system that (supposedly) works like no other. As I drove along, I couldn’t help but chuckle. After all, they made it sound like there’s some sort of silver bullet out there that will magically make your debt [...]

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What would you do with a major windfall? For the sake of argument, let’s say that someone dropped a million bucks in your lap. Would you pay down debt? Buy something nice? Save or invest it?
About a week ago, I posed this question to my “Tweeps” (people that follow me on Twitter). The primary limitation [...]

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In case you missed it the first time around, the good folks at Lending Club have offered to provide FCN readers with a $25 signup bonus* just for opening a Lending Club account.
Here’s how it works…
1. Visit Lending Club using a link in this post
2. Open and activate a lender account
3. The $25 will be [...]

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Consumer Reports just released the results of a survey aimed at identifying the best brokers in America. They surveyed over 9,000 readers, asking them about their experiences with various brokers between January 2008/January 2009. Topping their list were USAA Brokerage, Vanguard, and Edward Jones.
USAA Brokerage
USAA has received high marks in the past for other financial [...]

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Talking to your spouse about money can be difficult, but such conversations are vital to a healthy relationship. In fact, money problems are a common source of marital strife, so it’s important to maintain an open line of communication.
What follows are some general guidelines for talking with your spouse about your family’s finances:

Pick the right [...]

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Have you finished your taxes yet? We haven’t. I actually entered most of our information into TurboTax at least a month ago, but I never finished the job.
My lack of motivation was due in part to the fact that we owe a significant amount. This was by design, so we have the money on hand. [...]

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Up until about a year ago, we relied primarily on Vanguard’s Target Retirement funds for our long-term investments. For those that aren’t familiar with them, these funds (and others such as the Fidelity Freedom funds and TIAA-CREF Lifecycle funds) are designed to provide an “appropriate” asset allocation based on the date at which you expect [...]

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