Financial Literacy

Big Banks vs. Community Banks and Credit Unions

Community banks and credit unions are a unique “middle ground” between mega-banks (think Citibank, Chase, Wachovia) and online banks (like ING and Ally). They have some of the unique pros of both.

Video Review: Suze Orman Speaks at Google

Suze Orman recently spoke at Google about an action plan for employees, investing, saving, buying a home, credit scores, and her 10 “truths” of personal finance. Here are the highlights.

Track Your Actionable Net Worth Instead

Instead of tracking your complete net worth every month, try only tracking what you can affect directly–your “actionable” net worth, for a more complete short-term picture.

Understanding Compound Interest: Making it Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

Tom Becker from Money Choices teaches us about compound interest, real-life applications, and laddering our interest investments.

5 Essential Money Lessons From 2009

I take a look at some of the financial lessons of 2009 that were essential for our family to learn, and wish you a happy and healthy New Year!

How to Write a Great Financial Mission Statement

This is it–the one document that will guide your financial decisions for the rest of your life. Are you ready to write one?

How Credit Scores Are Determined

Learn about the components of a credit score (payment history, amounts owed, length of history, recent credit, and types of credit), why you should care about your score, and how to go about improving it (in simple terms).

The Basics of Setting Financial Priorities

Step-by-step to setting financial priorities – setting life goals first, then general financial goals, and finally getting specific and setting actions items.

Tracking Your Finances: Tasks and Tools

Tracking your finances is an essential personal finance skill, and one of the first we learn when first dealing with money on our own. Tracking involves more than just keeping an account register – some form of analysis should be applied to determine how and where money flows. The end result of applying the principles [...]

What Types of Accounts Should I Open?

The Personal Finance Basics series continues at Fiscal Fizzle, and today I will be discussing all of the basic account types you will need in order to succeed financially. Accounts are important to understand because they form the basis of our interaction with money and allow for containerizing and specializing how each portion of your [...]

How to Set Up Your First Successful Budget – Part III (Tracking & Review)

This is the last post in my three-part series on budgeting basics. I will wrap up the series by discussing strategies for tracking and reviewing your new budget to ensure that it’s working for you in the way you planned. If you’ve completed Parts I & II of this task, you should have a good [...]

How to Set Up Your First Successful Budget – Part II (Organizing and Setup)

This post is the second in a three-part series about setting up and maintaining a successful budget. Last week, we discussed what a budget was, how it could be beneficial (or practically essential) to reaching your financial goals, and the research that needed to be completed before we continued with Budgeting 101. The three parts [...]

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Financial Literacy

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