Paying them down and managing their financial impact. Is student loan debt weighing on the economy? Probably. Total student loan debt in America is now around $1.5 trillion, having tripled since 2008. The average indebted college graduate leaves campus owing nearly $40,000, and the mean monthly student loan payment for borrowers aged 30 and younger is about $350.1,2 The latest Federal Reserve snapshot shows 44.2 million Americans dealing with lingering education loans. The housing sector feels the strain: in a recent National Association of Realtors survey, 85% of non-homeowners aged 22-35 cited education loans as their main obstacle to buying a house. Eight percent of student loan holders f
What Determines Car Insurance Rates? Driver history is just one factor; there are many others. Your auto insurance payment is not just based on your driving history. Assorted variables come into play that have nothing to do with your accident record or your experience behind the wheel. Where you live counts. If you reside in a congested big-city neighborhood with an unyielding traffic stream, that could push your premium higher. Certainly, the accident threat is greater there than in a rural area. In addition, high-density neighborhoods may see more vandalism, break-ins, and auto theft than lower-density communities – plus, more car insurance fraud schemes.1 The vehicle you drive factors int
Why are investors and economists getting nervous about Treasury yields? What is the yield curve, and why is the financial media writing about it? Here is a brief explanation, starting with a clarification. A yield curve is really an X-Y graph projecting expected rates of return for equivalent-quality bonds with different maturity dates. But it is not just any yield curve that matters. When investors, commentators, and economists talk about “the yield curve,” they are talking about the graph plotting the interest rates of Treasuries: 3-month, 2-year, 5-year, 10-year, and 30-year notes. The “curve” is the line connecting their projected future yields. This Treasury yields snapshot is authorita
Why striving to stay in the workforce a little longer may make financial sense. The median retirement age for an American woman is 62. The Federal Reserve says so in its most recent Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (2017). Sixty-two, of course, is the age when seniors first become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits. This factoid seems to convey a message: a fair amount of American women are retiring and claiming Social Security as soon as they can.1 What if more women worked into their mid-sixties? Could that benefit them, financially? While health issues and caregiving demands sometimes force women to retire early, it appears many women are willing to stay on t