October 2016

A Passive Dollar: How to Generate Income with XTrade Europe

No matter what industry you work in, you know that no money comes for free. Any payoff involves an investment of resources such as time, capital, raw materials, or labor. That being said, the recent growth of forex trading has provided an opportunity to traders across the globe to make some extra money from anywhere in the world.

Forex trading – also known as CFD trading or online currency trading – is a market that revolves around the buying, selling, and exchanging of world currencies. The market is based on the changes in currencies’ values and how they are valued in comparison to each other.

Thanks to the omnipresence of the internet, it is possible to trade forex from anywhere in the world, at any time. For example, if you reside in Europe, you can trade using XTrade Europe on your own schedule – whether it be at home or while on vacation.

Keys to Successful Trades

Without a doubt, one of the most important aspects to quality trading is to pay attention to the markets and current events. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to succeed. As a beginner trader, you need to invest the time and effort into learning about the market and how it functions. This means learning about the different terms used in the industry and learning about the different currencies that are used across the globe.

There are a number of different resources, but XTrade Europe runs an educational website where they help beginner traders get on their feet. They have tons of valuable articles, videos, and training materials that will help you get a thorough understanding of how the market works.

4 Tax Deductions and Credits for College Students and Parents

by Hank Coleman

College Tax Deductions and Credits for Students

Most colleges are back in session, which means millions of students across the U.S. are in the midst of taking out student loans and paying for tuition, fees, textbooks, laptops, printers, and other school-related expenses. Those costs really start to add up. And, although grants, loans, and other forms of aid can help you maintain financial stability while you’re in school, college students and their parents shouldn’t miss out on potential savings through college tax deductions and tax credits. Publication 970 from the IRS lists all the ways independent students and parents with college-aged dependents can save money on their tax bills with education-related expenses. According to CollegeBoard.org, students and their parents saved about $17.9 billion on their federal income … Read more

The Surprises You Discover When You Make a Budget

by Jeremy

Most of us, at one point or other, start a budget. Some of us are natural budgeters. It just makes sense on some level to these people. But, there are often many surprises you find when you make a personal budget.

Carefully managing every dollar is wise. So, why wouldn’t you do it? Well, for other people this isn’t so easy. Just because budgeting is sensible doesn’t mean they do it regularly or rigorously.

Along with working out three times a week, eating many helpings of vegetables a day, and performing preventative maintenance on the water heater, just because something is smart to do doesn’t mean we always get it done.

The thing is, once you carefully make a personal budget and follow a budget for at least one month, you start to learn some surprising things about yourself and your spending habits. The image you have of your finances in your head likely does not correlate to reality in any realistic way. In some cases, we learn that things are better than we thought (hooray!), but in most cases, we learn that our money is being wasted more than we wanted to think.

This is one of the main reasons people don’t budget in the first place. There is a sense of dread that, once personal finances are examined, so many problems will reveal themselves that it will take too long to fix them, with too much tough work expended along the way.

It’s the same impulse that keeps us away from the dentist office, even though we haven’t been in a couple of years or more. We know that going will repair the damage, but the process is so uncomfortable that we put it off, sometimes indefinitely.

However, you manage to screw up the courage to perform your first budget, make it happen. Take a careful look at every dollar you spend for a month, and track exactly where it goes relative to your budgeting goals. Many people discover things that surprise them. Here are just a couple of examples.

How to Keep Financial Transparency in Marriage

by Hank Coleman

Keeping Financial Transparency in Marriage - Balancing Act by Joslyn Ewart

The following is a guest post by Joslyn Ewart, the author of “Balancing Act: Wealth Management Straight Talk for Women“. If you’d like to submit a guest post on Money Q&A, please check out the site’s guest posting guidelines.

Financial transparency in marriage is either fairly straightforward because the couple is comfortable with one another’s financial attitudes and values, or it can become a couple’s worst nightmare because they do not understand their spouse, at all.

And like so many things in life, how to approach the experience of financial transparency effectively depends on a number of things, such as the financial wherewithal each spouse brings to the marriage, the money messages each spouse was taught, and the personal finance values of each partner.

For the purposes of the following perspective, our scenario will assume that the couple has learned to accept differences between them and values working together without one spouse controlling the other by assuming financial omnipotence in the relationship.

Within this framework, financial transparency can be established and nourished as follows:

Conduct regular conversations about money, pinpointing needs and interests
Identify financial resources–your income/expenses; what you own/owe
Organize financial documents/information and update quarterly, as needed
Be certain there is easy access to all financial materials
Set achievable goals: goals for saving, spending, sharing, debt, family protection
Determine a plan for achieving your goals; consider short and long-term needs
Prioritize the steps you intend to take
Decide how to monitor progress toward achieving your goals
Fine-tune your planning, if needed

Five Sneaky Ways To Save Hundreds When Selling Your Car

by Hank Coleman

How To Save Hundreds When Selling Your Car

Recently I sold my beloved BMW and am currently looking for a new car to replace it. I took my car to one of those places with signs out front that say, “buy, sell, or trade”. So, I sold it to them. I had them make me an offer, and the offer was fair. It was also several hundred dollars more than what I had expected to receive. But, what are some tips for selling your car to earn a little more money? I ended up leasing a new car. Could I have gotten more for my car? Could I have saved myself some money by preparing for the sale earlier? How far are you willing to go to save … Read more

College Costs: How to Encourage Your Kids to Go In-State (Saving You Thousands)

by Hank Coleman

The following is a guest post by Brian Kuhn CFP®, the author of, “The Personal Finance Handbook“. If you’d like to submit a guest post on Money Q&A, please check out the site’s guest posting guidelines.

College costs are a problem. It is a trillion dollar problem delaying the retirement of the parents and stunting the career growth of the students. Everybody knows it and it’s not going away anytime soon. Total student loan debt is now over $1.3 Trillion as of June 2016.

Planning for your children’s college journey is a personal finance issue. It is often asked, what strategies there are or how much to save? With what type of vehicle to save in? Are there any tricks to the FAFSA process? (In almost all cases there aren’t.)

You can save into 529 plans. You can shelter income through deferral to a 401k. Or, you can remove assets from the child’s name. But, these strategies are really limited in their effect.

What About Instate Tuition?

What does make a big difference though is whether the child goes to college in-state or out. That is a communication issue, not a personal finance issue.

Kids go out of state for all sorts of reasons, not all of them logically thought through. Ever hear a 17 year-old say they want to attend that public university half way across the country for $50,000 a year because the campus layout really fit them?

But, hey, this is your kid we are talking about, you want the best for them. If the communication is good though they might go in-state and love it, saving you in some cases tens of thousands of dollar in the process.

Total student loan debt is now over $1.3 Trillion as of June 2016.Click To Tweet