Life insurance has always been an important purchase for people to make. The death benefit your beneficiaries receive when a life insurance policy pays out can be used to pay off debt, keep your family in the home you worked so hard to create for them and help ease the financial burden caused by the loss of a family wage earner.
But now, while college savings and retirement accounts struggle to get back up to pre economic downturn values, life insurance can provide an even more valuab…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on March 10, 2010 at 9:30pm —
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I am about to rock your world with a startling confession. Alright, so this confession probably won't rock your world and it probably isn't all that startling... but it hurts my pride to speak of it, so please pretend you're rocked and startled since that will make the pain a little more bearable.
When it comes to taxes, I am like a clueless infant. Worse than that, I am like a weeping, clueless infant. I can read IRS code and understand it pretty well, but when it comes to figuring ou…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on March 3, 2010 at 8:30pm —
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The Credit CARD Act of 2009 is a 45 page long amendment to the Truth in Lending Act that makes for a wonderful cat bed—at least, that’s what my cats seem to think as they both stretch out luxuriously on its pages. And that’s fine for them, after all, they don’t have to worry about interest rates, late payment penalties, underage consumers and financial literacy because those are all human problems.
Honestly though, I’m not sure my understanding of the verbose Credit CARD Act of 2009 is…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on February 24, 2010 at 2:00pm —
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For some people, a frugal way of life is very easy to adopt. It could be because of a job loss, the birth of a child or a lifestyle change, but for whatever reason these people find switching over to a frugal lifestyle easy, fun, challenging and exciting.
Some people find frugality less fun. Whether it’s because they have a high paying job and don’t see the need for frugality, because they don’t have a family to support, or because they don’t think they have time for frugality, these fo…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on February 17, 2010 at 7:35pm —
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Now we’ve come to the benefit riders. These are riders that add additional benefits to your life insurance policy.
Benefit RidersAccelerated Death Benefit Rider: The accelerated death benefit rider is a rider that pays out a portion of your death benefit before you pass away. Obviously, this rider has some very important caveats or life insurance companies would be advancing payments every five mi…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on February 10, 2010 at 2:45pm —
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This week, let’s talk about premium riders. Those are riders that somehow affect your life insurance premium.
Premium Riders
Waiver of premium: The waiver of premium rider is one which waives your annual life insurance premium if you become disabled over the life of your policy. It is important to remember that the waiver of premium rider generally only kicks in when you lose your income as a result of a qualifying disability. This keeps your life insurance policy in-force even w…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on February 3, 2010 at 8:30pm —
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Like any complex financial product, life insurance isn't really a point-and-click type of purchase. In order to maximize your premium dollars and create a policy with real value for you and your family, you must consider the purchase of life insurance riders.
A rider is basically an additional benefit you can tack on to your policy. It's kind of like buying a model home with upgraded counter tops. The rider costs a little bit of extra money but provides an additional benefit and they are genera…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on January 27, 2010 at 5:00pm —
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I was watching some footage of Anderson Cooper saving a young boy's life in Haiti and I started thinking about natural disasters. The tsunami in 2004, hurricane Katrina, this earthquake (and aftershock) in Haiti, the wild fires in California, and all the other disasters in between.
You know as well as I do that there is no way to insure yourself against being in a state, country or area that experiences a natural disaster. There is no insurance you can buy that makes sure you are never affected…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on January 20, 2010 at 5:00pm —
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This week while we were at Home Depot buying some carpet, my husband broke a tooth. It was his odd love for beef jerky that initiated the break, but regardless of what the cause, it was broken. These things can happen to any of us at any time, whether we have dental insurance or not, whether we have emergency savings or not. And you can't exactly leave a broken tooth unfixed for an indefinite period of time...you know...stuff can get in there and make an already expensive situation positively ca…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on January 13, 2010 at 7:38pm —
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This is a
great list of things for everyone to do to rehab their budget.
Did Suze Orman forget anything? If so, add it below!
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on January 7, 2010 at 1:30pm —
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Lately I’ve been reading Dickens’ classic tale,
David Copperfield. Like most Dickens novels,
David Copperfield has orphans, urchins, child labor, mean adults and people who dress in way too complicated a manner for daily life.
But
David Copperfield has a very important character whose way of living and resulting insight is still relevant today. That character is Mr. Micawber, a man of little means who has grandiose ideas. Mr. Micawber constantly dreams of the things he will…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on January 6, 2010 at 2:30pm —
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Every year, I like to delude myself by making New Year's resolutions that involve eating healthier, exercising daily, and spending more time being active (outside of the daily exercise). These are important resolutions because, if left to my own devices, I would watch sci-fi movies and eat potato chips and French onion dip with a Ben and Jerry's chaser all day every day.
While these goals do help me make some changes in my overall eating and activity habits, they begin as the insane ramblings o…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on December 30, 2009 at 6:30pm —
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Well, here it is almost 2010. The 2009 tax year is just about toast and any IRA contribution deduction you want you have to secure before you get that midnight kiss as New Year’s Eve turns into New Year’s Day. Or do you? If you have an IRA that was open prior to 2010, you can make a contribution any time before April 16th and choose to have it attributed toward either 2009 or 2010. Just make sure you let the firm holding your IRA know what tax year you want the contribution attributed to.
Of co…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on December 23, 2009 at 5:11pm —
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If there is one thing that people universally dread it is tax season. For business owners tax season comes up to five times a year. No business owner should go through these quarterly and annual paper-cut ridden days without their new best friend—a CPA and many non-business owning individuals should consider getting one too.
What is a CPA?
CPAs, also known as Certified Public Accountants, are number crunchers with accounting degrees who have also taken the financial industries equivalent to th…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on December 16, 2009 at 11:30pm —
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Earlier this week I came across
this article which reminded me of just how bad your life can get when you are the victim of identity theft.
Correcting your credit report, clearing your name, erasing the debt for financial decisions you never made--it is all overwhelming, time consuming and really, really hard. So instead of being loose about our personal information and having to correct the situati…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on December 9, 2009 at 8:44pm —
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The purchase of a homeowner's insurance policy is almost a knee jerk reaction when you buy a home. While that is a good thing since homeowner's insurance is a great protection against the loss of one of your biggest assets, the "knee jerk" part is a little scary because it means that many people don't take the time to understand their policy before they buy it. Then, when an insurable event occurs and the homeowner files a claim only to find that they are uninsured or underinsured for some impor…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on December 2, 2009 at 11:30am —
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Since today is the biggest travel day of the year, I thought we should go a little off topic and discuss some tips to help make your travel a little easier. I'm going to break this up into to sections: Travel by Car and Travel by Air.
Travel by Car
-Check your fluids: Take out the oil dipstick and make sure your oil is full. There is nothing worse than running out of oil and overheating during your holiday weekend.
-Fill your tires: Check the air pressure in your tires and give them a…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on November 25, 2009 at 1:00am —
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All you super-traditionalist Black Friday shoppers out there might want to plug your ears right now...well...actually, since this is in writing maybe closing your eyes would be more in order. So, close your eyes so we won't hear your agonized screams at what I am about to suggest:
Everyone knows that Black Friday is THE best day to get your holiday shopping done because the sales are so spectacular....but not many people want to go stand in line at Sears at 4AM, in the cold, with all the other…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on November 18, 2009 at 7:32pm —
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I am always on the lookout for free stuff. Think about it, the more things you get for free the fewer things you spend money on. I get a lot of free samples, free food, free thunder thighs (you know...as a result of the free food) and free e-books. Information products, like free e-books, are often the most valuable free products I score but also the least predictable. I mean, if Burt's Bees is giving away a free lip balm sample I know it'll be good; but a 30 page e-book on bee farming....maybe…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on November 11, 2009 at 2:33pm —
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This week we are continuing our simplified discussion about life insurance policies and the differences between them all. Again, we are just going for an easy, glossy overview here so that you get the concept--this is not an in-depth tutorial at all, but it will certainly prep you for one.
If you remember last week, we talked about the
difference between permanent (or whole) life and term. The polic…
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Added by Yolander Prinzel on November 4, 2009 at 9:00pm —
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