My husband thought the cashback app was a rounding error. Ten years of that $10 a month is $1,678 — $478 of it just shows up. Here's the full money-moves sequence I wish I'd started sooner.
I do the math on our retirement accounts every quarter, and one number keeps bugging me: roughly 60% of Social Security's deficit comes from a decision made in the 1940s. Here's the plain-English version of why electing candidates who tax the ultra-wealthy matters for your 401(k).
Mid-July, I sat at the kitchen table with a notebook and did what I should have done in January: a real money checkup. Six things — 401(k) contributions, beneficiaries, tax withholding, QCDs, portfolio balance, and my organizational mess — took me one evening. Here's the list I'll never skip again.