Making smart investment choices is the key to achieving your financial goals. The trick is knowing what a smart investment looks like. There are so many books, magazines and television programs dedicated to the subject, it’s easy to get confused and overwhelmed by the information glut, especially when so called experts provide conflicting advice.

If you’re considering a credit union, you are probably attracted to the low fees and competitive interest rates. One of the reasons they can afford to do so because they’re not-for-profit. Credit unions are owned by their own members, not anonymous investors. While banks use profits to pay owners and shareholders, credit unions give their profits back to their membership. This allows them to offer better rates, improved returns, fewer fees, and lower minimum account balance requirements.

You’ve heard it all before. Turn the lights out when you leave a room, disconnect electronics when you’re not using them, and unplug phone chargers from the wall. Apparently, failing to do these simple tasks puts a huge drain on both your bank account and the earth’s non-renewable resources. Is this true, or is it just a green myth perpetuated by overenthusiastic doomsday tree-huggers set on micromanaging our lives?

Reverse mortgages are probably the most misunderstood loan product around. Depending on who you ask, they are described as abusive loans that prey on the old and poor or the panacea to all retirement problems. They are neither.

Car buyers will spend hours researching reviews on their favorite models looking for the vehicle that best fits their needs and their budget. For instance, according to a report by AutoTrader Group, the average car shopper spends more than 11 hours online researching cars and three and a half hours offline. The loan used to finance the car, on the other hand, is often just knocked together in the back office without the buyer giving much thought to anything but the total amount of the monthly payment.

In just two years time, California has gone from a basket case state with a shortfall of almost one-third the size of its entire budget to having a $7 billion surplus. Why does California, the largest economy in the U.S. with a GDP the size of Russia’s, have such income volatility issues? More importantly, what can we learn from how the state legislature is trying to fix the problem?

Consumers, that’s you and me, are naive and gullible creatures. We may think we have a sense of what is a fair price, but we are just playthings for marketing and advertising executives. You have to give them credit though when you think of the prices we are willing to pay for stuff we either don’t need or could find cheaper elsewhere.

Student-Athletes Should Be Paid, And They Are; But Is It Enough?

So you have a great business idea you’re excited about and you’ve managed to squirrel away some seed money to make your dream a reality. However, you’re still not ready to launch your business. What should you do with your cash? Great question. This article will give you some clear and actionable advice on what you should do with your spare cash until your start-up takes off.

If credit cards were bicycles, secured credit cards would be a set of trusty training wheels.