Mr. Money Sense 
Thinking of going abroad this summer for vacation? If you are a first-time passport applicant, you may want to apply early if you want to save some money.
U.S. passport fees are going up $10 starting on April 2, 2018.
Perhaps your parents are taking you off their auto insurance policy now that you’ve graduated from college or you’ve been paying for your auto insurance for years without a second thought of what you are paying for or what you actually are getting. Auto insurance doesn’t have to be confusing.
Learn more about insurance and how you can save money on your car insurance.
As a self-employed individual for the majority of my adult life, I’ve found there are many perks of self-employment. But one thing that may keep some people from taking the leap to being their own boss is the lack of an employer-sponsored retirement plan such as a 401k.
Enter the Solo 401k, a tax-advantaged qualified retirement plan for the self-employed individual. The Solo 401k not only allows a business owner to save money for retirement; it also makes it extremely easy to supercharge one’s contributions for maximum tax-benefits and retirement savings over all the other self-employed retirement plans and even the traditional 401k.
It’s that time of the year again that no one looks forward to. 1099’s are showing up in the mailbox which means tax season is right around the corner.
If you have a big tax bill due to the IRS, there is something you can do to lessen the blow to your wallet by paying your taxes with something that’s currently in your wallet. No, I don’t mean pocket lint. I’m talking about paying your taxes with your credit card.
A few weeks ago I found a nice desk on Craigslist that someone was giving away for free. It was perfect for the office my brother was planning to lease, so we headed out to pick it up. The person who was giving it away lived about 30 miles away and Google Maps showed that it would take 50 minutes to drive there. Only it was 6 PM and the middle of rush hour. By the time we got there it was over an hour and a half later with a lot of time sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
This is an all too common occurrence in many cities every morning and again later in the evening. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2016 the average American spent 26 minutes in their car commuting from home to work. As a nation we are wasting billions of hours of our lives sitting in our cars.
For many people, starting up their ice cube of a car and letting it warm up a bit is something that we don’t really think about because it was something that’s always been done. Our parents did it because their parents did it or you hear how someone had a friend who didn’t warm up their car and the engine blew up and so on.
It turns out in modern vehicles, the practice of idling your car during the winter is no longer needed. In fact, most manufacturers and auto experts recommend driving off gently after about 30 seconds. You are actually hurting the engine, wasting gas, and polluting the environment when warming it up for much longer than that.
In our daily lives it’s hard to imagine there is anything that we use more than our eyes. For those of us who don’t have perfect vision, eyeglasses are a must-have item that we put on first thing in the morning and only take off when we climb back into bed at night.
Buying your next pair of eyeglasses online can save you hundreds of dollars for the same quality of glasses you would have gotten at the store.
Does your iPhone feel like it is running slower than when it was new or is it just your imagination?
You might not be imagining things. iPhone users have long reported that their phones seem to run slower after a new iOS update. Now Apple has confirmed that they are throttling down the processor’s speeds when the battery capacity deteriorates over time.
We are all busy these days. There are new emails waiting to be checked, Netflix shows to binge watch, Instagram updates from friends of what they had for lunch, or The Donald’s latest tweets to read. With so many things vying for our attention, automatic bill payments can be really appealing. You spend five minutes setting it up, and you never have to see or manually pay another bill again!
With automatic bill pay, you can set up auto payment plans for all your bills. Your utilities, mortgage, phone, internet, cable, auto, or any other regular payments can be automatically deducted from your bank account at your scheduled date, freeing you from missed payments and late fees. But is it a smart idea?
There are many banks, brokerages, credit unions, and insurance companies that are offering HSA accounts these days because 97% of HSA accounts are in cash. All this money sitting in accounts are allowing these companies to make loans with that money to earn more money while only giving you a fraction of interest back in return. With interest rates being so low, those who keep their HSA funds in savings accounts are actually losing money to inflation as health care costs continue to increase each year. This is why it is better to find a provider that lets you invest your HSA savings.
With so many choices, choosing a HSA provider that meets your investment needs can be a little challenging. To help you get started on your search, this is a review on some of the popular HSA providers that allow investing of your funds and their fees.