What do you do with big money? Getting rich quick can be liberating, but it can also be frustrating.Sudden wealth can help you address retirement saving or college funding anxieties, and it may also give you the opportunity to live and work on your terms. On the other hand, you’ll pay more taxes, attract more attention, and maybe even contend with jealousy or envy. You may also deal with grief or stress, as a lump sum may be linked to a death, a divorce, or a pension payout decision. Windfalls don’t always lead to happy endings. Take the example of Alex and Rhoda Toth, a Florida couple down to their last $25 who hit a lottery jackpot of roughly $13 million in 1990. Their feel-good story ende
You don’t need to be wealthy to make an impact and get a win-win. Do you have to make a multimillion-dollar gift to a charity to receive immediate or future financial benefits? No. If you’re not yet a millionaire or simply a “millionaire next door,” yet want to give, consider the following options, which may bring you immediate or future tax deductions. Partnership gifts. These gifts are made via long-term arrangements between donors and recipient charities or non-profits, usually with income resulting for the donor and an eventual transfer of the principal to the charity at the donor’s death. For example, a charitable remainder trust(CRT) may be structured to provide a beneficiary (i.e., yo
Fall is a good time to assess where you stand and where you could be. You need not wait for 2019 to plan improvements to your finances. You can begin now. The last few months of 2018 give you a prime time to examine critical areas of your budget, your credit, and your investments. You could work on your emergency fund (or your rainy day fund).To clarify, an emergency fund is the money you store in reserve for unforeseen financial disruptions; a rainy day fund is money saved for costs you anticipate will occur. A strong emergency fund contains the equivalent of a few months of salary, maybe even more; a rainy day fund could contain as little as a few hundred dollars. Optionally, you could hol
A useful skill, even in a digital age. Do you know how much money you have in your checking account? If you keep your checkbook balanced, answering that question becomes easier. Balancing, reconciling, whatever you want to call it – this is a core financial skill, even if you happen to do all your banking online. If you bounce a check, overdraft fees can be high. While apps like Mint and Prism give you a real-time look at account balances, transactions, and monthly debts to pay, their alerts and notifications do not necessarily instill good money habits. Balancing a checkbook takes just a few minutes a month and having a hard-copy portrait of your checking account is a plus. Noting your tran