I’ve talked a lot in the past about emergency funds — why you should have one, how big it should be, etc. Today I thought I’d ask you guys about your emergency funds. More specifically, I’m curious how many months worth of expenses you keep on hand. Given the current state of the economy, I’m [...]

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Over the weekend I received an e-mail from a reader asking about the effects of closing an old credit card on your credit score. The short answer is that the length of your credit history is an key factor in determining your credit score, so closing old accounts can hurt your credit score.
Anyway, all of [...]

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Time for a quick poll. Given all of the press coverage of the slow economy, I’m curious as to how it’s affecting you guys. As for us, we’re pretty fortunate.
We’re not looking to move, I have a very stable job, we also have a good bit of side income to smooth out any rough patches [...]

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The Money Poll on credit limits has now run it’s course, so it’s time to take a look at the results… As of this writing a whopping 36% of you reported having over $50,000 in available credit. Apparently I underestimated you guys when I put together the list of possible responses! On the low end, [...]

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It’s been a long, long time since I’ve run a money poll, but while updating Quicken the night another poll idea hit me… I’m curious as to how much you guys have in available credit. I’m talking here about credit card limits, so simply total up the limits and answer the poll below. For what [...]

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The Money Poll on tax returns has now run its course, and it looks like we have a bunch of do-it-yourselfers hanging out around here… Over 65% of all respondents are going to be preparing their own tax returns this year, while a bit under 30% will be hiring a pro. In years past, I [...]

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I noted the other day that I was waffling about how to handle our tax prep this year… Do it myself again, or hire a pro? Well, I ended up deciding to split the difference this year, and do it both ways.
Over the weekend, I fired up Turbo Tax and hunkered down to figure things [...]

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This week’s Money Poll focused on the number of open bank accounts that you have, and the results are pretty interesting… There were 180 responses, and nearly 2/3 of the respondents have between two and four bank accounts. A few ’simpletons’ have just one (5%), and a smattering of banking extremists have more than ten [...]

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As I was updating Quicken over the weekend, I got to thinking about how much more complex our finances are than they used to be. We now have multiple retirement accounts, a non-retirement investment account, and five different bank accounts. Yep, five. Our local checking account, our busines checking account, and three online savings accounts [...]

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Based on the results of my highly scientific poll, I can now predict that the stock market will be either up or down during the next year… We now have over 100 votes, and that Indianapolis Colts hold a 58% to 42% lead over the Chicago Bears.
Just to re-cap the point of this poll, the [...]

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