We’ve all seen the “Top Ten Ways to Cut Costs” articles that invariably appear this time of year. Some offer useful and basic tips (buy generic). Other suggestions are more challenging (buy a new home with energy-saving features). So which ones are worth a serious look? » Read More

As any homeowner will tell you, there’s nothing quite as intimidating as writing that down payment check, especially as a first-time buyer. It’s hard not to feel your future cementing into place with each pen stroke. However, if you’ve done your homework, there’s no reason for anxiety! Here are four questions you should ask before buying a house. » Read More

(With apologies to Abe Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address)

“Four credit scores and many years ago, the banks and credit card companies brought forth onto this continent a new notion, conceived by an appetite to spend more than we earn, and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are entitled to giant flat screen TVs and Vegas vacations.

Now we are engaged in a great battle, testing whether we as American consumers, so conceived and dedicated, shall continue to live beyond our means. Confronting us are the excess spending and inflated credit ratings of the fondly-remembered past and the tumbling incomes and rising interest rates of the harsh present.

So today, we have come to the final resting place of our consumer dreams, the day of reckoning upon us, haunted by the seductive spirits of easy credit that brought us to this place.

But in a larger sense, we cannot, should not, reminisce for that past affluence bought on the cheap.  The world will little note, nor long remember our Utopian credit-funded days.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great tasks remaining, that we must re-learn to pay with cash, live within our means and save for the future.

Upon these old virtues, this nation shall have a new birth of economic freedom—and that economic freedom of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Tom Atkinson May 7^th, 2010

Aurora, IL

About five weeks ago, I was chatting about the holidays with a nurse at my routine check-up.  She asked me if I had completed my shopping.  Completed?  I must have misunderstood. 

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I’ve been a financial planner for 25 years.  Some of the best training for the job doesn’t come from reading books or talking to other experts.  Sometimes it comes from my own experience. » Read More

Parents find it easier to talk with teens about the birds and bees than money topics such as the cost of college.  Yes, many parents are shy about talking with their kids about…money!
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