Financial Resolutions for the New Year

Another year is in the books, and it’s been a wild one—marked most notably for you, I’m sure, by the creation of this website. Pat yourself on the back for a great year, and get ready to gear up for another one.

With a new year, of course, come resolutions for how to improve in the coming months: vows to lose weight, exercise more, be nicer to people, and plenty of other goals. With all that ahead of you, why not take the opportunity to set some financial goals for the upcoming year?

Next week’s article will focus on how you can achieve your goals at a higher success rate. For now, let’s discuss some viable financial resolutions and how they matter to your long-term financial health:

Smart Shopping After the Holidays

The holidays have come and gone, and hopefully you’ve gotten to enjoy the things that truly matter. You’ve gotten some time with your friends and family; you’ve gotten some much-needed rest off from work or school; and you’ve gotten to catch up on the sleep you’ve been missing.

Those are the things with a lasting impact during the holidays, but people also make a big deal of the shopping that comes with them. For stores looking to unload their merchandise, it isn’t enough to have big sales leading up to the holidays. Instead, when the holidays pass, they continue with the steep discounts to get rid of the inventory they still haven’t moved. It’s all one big cycle, but it’s one out of which you can make the most if you come prepared.

Here are some tips for smart shopping after the holiday season:

Saving Money on Flights

It’s now winter break, and many of us are headed home for the holidays. Soon, if not already, you will probably be booking plans for your return to campus. And that’s where this article comes in.

The recent boom in web technology and user interfaces has given regular people access to a ton of information about flights. With all those resources out there, it can be a bit overwhelming at times to book a trip. How do you know if you’re really getting the best rate?

Fortunately, there are a few tips that I can recommend for saving money on your next bit of air travel:

The Importance of (Free) Tax Preparation Software

After a brief hiatus from our series on taxes, we're back with a new article about how to make the process incredibly simple.  In the past, filing your taxes required getting together a ton of paperwork, filling out forms by hand, tallying up all the numbers, and sending in the proper documentation. No longer. Today, over 80% of tax returns are filed electronically, either through a tax professional or with independent software. And the amount of people filing those taxes on their own is on the rise.

For young people, downloading free federal tax software is a must. There is no cost to it, as long as you earn below roughly $50,000, and if anything, it is another resource that could be used in conjunction with something like professional advice. Here are a few other reasons to use free federal tax software:

Spotting Phony Investment Secrets

I’ve written previously about what I think are the best investment strategies for young people (well worth another read), but this is a topic that needs rehashing. Especially as the country approaches the fiscal cliff (automatic decreases in government spending and increases in taxes that could harm consumer demand), people are anxious about the stock market. And because people are anxious, they are prone to making some poor decisions.

What’s the problem with people being anxious about the markets? Well, for one, they might be tempted to pay large premiums for “expert advice”—even though they would be better off passively managing their money. That is, instead of turning to an expert who promises to get them large returns in uncertain times (but fails), they could be putting their money in low-cost index funds and earning a higher, more consistent return.

There are other problems with fears about market conditions: People are more likely to buy at peaks of the market—when conditions seem to be going great—and to bail out of it at the bottom—when things seem as if they could not be going worse. The problem is then, of course, that people are buying high and selling low; they are losing a lot of money on their purchases by getting scared, instead of letting the market build back up. And that is just one mistake that people make with stock trading in times of uncertainty.