Many of us were never taught how to manage credit cards or how they even work. Let’s start off with some basics before jumping into how to pay down your debt faster.

First off, you should download your credit card statement so you understand what’s on it. While credit card statements are organized differently depending on the creditor, each of them have the same features.

So, you have a great credit score, your spending is under control, and you want to maximize your great score by getting into the habit of using cards that earn you points and save you money.

Great news! While we always recommend that you resist the urge to rack up points until you know that you aren’t going to rack up debt, once you’ve reached that milestone, using cards to your advantage is a great part of your overall financial strategy.

It seems to be baby season. We’ve already had a FinGym baby this year and there is another on the way!

We often get questions from new or soon-to-be parents who want to know the best way to save for their children’s futures, so we wanted to break down a couple of the most common ways to save for college or other needs.

Open Enrollment season is upon us, and with it the yearly opportunity to make sure we’re taking advantage of all the workplace perks we are entitled to. This means checking that we’ve signed on to get tax breaks on commuting, health care costs, and child care. It also means being sure we’re enrolled in our retirement accounts so we can build wealth to secure our future.

Last year, in an effort to help student loan borrowers through the financial crisis that COVID-19 brought upon us, the Federal Government suspended payments and interest accrual on most Federal student loans. At first, this administrative forbearance was slated to last until October of 2021. Since then, the student loan pause has been extended twice, but we have been promised that this is the last time. Federal student loans will go back into repayment as of January 31, 2022.

I’m so sorry that you are dealing with this. Having to cope with unjust and unconstitutional violations of your right to choose should not happen to anyone, and we are appalled by how far reaching this legislation is. And from a financial perspective, we know that this law can be devastating to women. For those who aren’t aware, here is some background for understanding how dire the situation is: SB 8 (formally known as Texas Senate Bill 8) is a law that went into effect on September 1st, 2021 that bans abortion in Texas as soon as a “heartbeat” can be detected in an embryo, which happens at about 6 weeks.

This post is part 4 in a series on responsible investing coming out this month. In this series, we’ll break down the basics and help you learn about socially and environmentally responsible investments and how you can take part no matter your level or how much you have to invest. For the purpose of this series. I’ll be using the term responsible investing as a catch-all to include all of the strategies under this general umbrella such as SRI, ESG, and impact investing.

There is a maxim in investing that we at For What It’s Worth (FWIW) have come to embrace: “All investing has an impact —the question is whether it is positive or negative.” Over the last decade, there has been a growing recognition that investment capital could be a powerful tool to help shape the world we want — to address opportunities and challenges across society and across our natural world. This is evident in the explosion of ESG investing — investing that includes a focus on companies and funds that prioritize Environmental, Social, and Governance factors. And the best news for investors? A body of data is emerging from across the market demonstrating that ESG investments can outperform when it comes to returns.

In this article, learn about how to make your money work for you while doing good for the world by joining Public.com. Public is the community for investors to build their portfolios with any amount of money and share insights with each other. The American stock market is one of the biggest generators of wealth, often averaging annual returns of 10%. That’s better than bonds and high-yield savings accounts. And yet, according to a 2021 Gallup poll, almost half of the country does not own stocks.

But what about your retirement accounts? Aren’t those investments too? Yes! And can you make more intentional decisions with those investments? Yes! (Most of the time, or at least you can work towards increasing your options!) Here are different types of retirement plans and how you can adjust them to invest in socially or environmentally responsible funds:

As a Trainer, I always ask my clients to track their spending. After all, it's hard to know how much you can save or invest if you don’t know what’s coming in and going out! One pain point we hit on often is that people think it’s not a good time to track spending because something out of the ordinary is happening. Maybe it’s vacation time, a holiday, a houseguest will be visiting, or any number of other little things that come up in life seem to conspire so that it doesn’t seem like the spending we’ll be tracking is “typical” enough.

This is a question we get a lot. Sometimes people have consumer or student loan debt, and they feel guilty saving and investing, or think it’s irresponsible to put money away while they still have credit card bills to pay. Sometimes they’ve read a lot about the student loan debt crisis, and they're scared that it’s going to be a death sentence if they don’t put every penny into paying it off.

This post is Part 1 in a series on Responsible Investing, which we are focusing on for the month of September. In this series, we’ll break down the basics and help you learn about socially and environmentally responsible investments and how you can take part — no matter your experience level or how much you have to invest.

Eight years ago, I delivered a pro-bono financial plan to a former co-worker; and after I had gone through all of her numbers with her, she said, “You know you’re saving my life, right?” Those words hit me like a lightning bolt. At this point, I had been delivering financial plans for almost two years, and no one had said anything like that to me.

Although they should only be used as a last resort, 401(k) loans can be a helpful tool to get you through a rough time or to help you contribute to a downpayment for a primary residence. A 401k loan entails taking a loan from your retirement and paying it back over time with money that is deducted directly from your paycheck. Not all 401(k)s allow loans, but many do.

In our previous Retirement for Beginners blog post, we illustrated the difference between saving money under your mattress or in a piggy bank and investing for retirement. The key takeaway was that if you just save money, it doesn’t grow over time (and actually loses value due to inflation), but if you invest, you’ll benefit from the power of compounding.

“I’m starting Monday!” Ahhhh… the age-old excuse for why you’re not in a fitness routine right now. We can put this excuse with “I don’t have time.” Let it live next door to “I have no motivation.” The funny thing is that you do have motivation to do some things. You’re reading this blog post right now, so I’ll safely guess that you’re motivated to change your relationship with money. The money that you have has been earned, so somewhere, whether it is out of pure necessity or the enjoyment you get out of work, you have found the motivation to make money. Let’s start there.

It’s Retirement Month at The Financial Gym, and we’re kicking off the month with a retirement guide for beginners. Since it’s a big topic, we’re breaking it down into several parts, and this is part one, where we’ll talk about how to figure out how much you have to save in the first place. A lot of the articles we see out there about retirement are, well, just not helpful. Some throw out huge numbers that sound impossible to reach without telling you how to get there.

Every year, millions of people change jobs and leave their 401(k)s behind with their former employers. This happens for many reasons. Switching jobs is a busy, stressful time for most of us, so it’s often easier to just do nothing and leave your old account where it is. Even if you want to transfer your 401(k) to a new retirement account - technically called a rollover - it can be a tedious process.

I don’t know about you, but after 17 months of pandemic living, lockdowns, social unrest, government transition, nonstop virtual meetings, and general feelings of isolation and depression, I’m exhausted. I’ve never struggled so hard, for so long; and just when I feel like the struggling may end, new struggles present themselves. In the past, my coping mechanisms were human interactions: hugs from my clients, lunch with my teammates, and laughing with friends; and for the most part, none of those have been available to me.