How to Make Money With Your Tax Return

April 18^th is the day your taxes are due this year and it’s a date that is quickly approaching! For many Americans tax day is something of a holiday because we typically overpay our taxes during the year and then get a refund from the government at the end of the year. That means millions of us get a windfall to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars. In the past your impulse might have been to spend that money quickly on something frivolous and soon forgotten by the time the next tax day rolls around. As a reader of the Bill Stark Blog you’ve now had your eyes awakened to the power of your money. This year let’s do something new with our tax refund: let’s use that money to make us even more.

Here’s how…

The Politically Radical Act of Living Frugal

$2,100,000,000,000. That’s the total annual global budget for spending on advertising. It’s an astronomically astounding number: $2.1 trillion dollars. Every single part of that multi-trillion dollar spend is targeted directly at you, trying to get you to buy something you had no intention of buying. It’s so powerful the average American has spent over $15,000 more than they earn trying to keep up. We spend so much on stuff most of us are one bump away from being broke. What if there was an alternative option to a life of consuming so much stuff it left you impoverished?

What if you said “No,”?

When You're In Too Deep

Recently on Facebook a friend of mine made a somewhat despondent post about their financial situation and how it felt they were in a hole so deep there was nothing they could ever do to get out of it. I reached out to ask if they’d been reading the blog to which they responded, “I’m nowhere near the financial space to begin taking advantage of the stuff you write about.” I wondered if that was true and started considering the fact that while I write a lot about maximizing situations like having access to a 401k I haven’t spent as much time writing about what to do in a financial situation with little means and the feeling that your situation is hopeless. Today we’re going to change that.

The Bill Stark Guide to Repaying Federal Student Loans

If you’re like millions of Americans you have student loan debt and you’re interested in figuring out how to pay your student loans back. Or perhaps you want to know how to lower your student loan payments, lower your student loan interest rate, or lower your student loan repayment total. Luckily for you there are loads of ways to accomplish all of these things with programs offered by the federal government. Today we’re going to talk about the many ways you can make managing your student loans easier.

Behold the Power of a Fully Operational Emergency Fund

(Don’t miss a thing! You can now sign up for email updates each time I write a new article. Simply use the email link in the sidebar or, if you’re on mobile, switch to web view and sign up there. Or you can add me to your RSS feed via feedburner: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheBillStarkBlog)

The biggest challenge to taking control of your personal finances isn’t having too little money, or owing too much, or even lacking information on how to gain that control. The reality is? For far too many people, caring about this type of thing just isn’t sexy. By reading The Bill Stark Blog you’re already well ahead of your average American and in today’s installment we’re going to talk about that oft overlooked, highly critical, super important, totally unsexy key to gaining control over your financial wellbeing and future: the emergency fund and its cousin the emergency cushion.

The High Costs of Being Broke

I’ve talked before about doing “ramen math” in college, when I was so broke I calculated exactly how to spend every last dollar and on paydays had to write a bad check to have enough gas to get to the bank to deposit my paycheck. I had to risk beating the gas station’s deposit to the bank with my own and if I missed? Bank fees, bounced check fees, even potentially criminal charges. At the time I had so little money there was no other option. My “ramen math” days taught me a lot of lessons but none was more important than this simple fact: being broke is really expensive.

The reality in America (as in most places) is that having more money is better than having less. That seems comically obvious but it means more than its face value: when you have money, it’s much easier to get more money. When you don’t have a lot of money you get charged fees and expenses simply because you don’t have more money. What costs are there to being broke? Read on…

Magic Dollars and the Most Powerful Force in the Universe

It’s been just over a century since the great Albert Einstein successfully predicted how gravity works and now we’ve confirmed he was right. What’s that got to do with personal finance? Gravity has long been held as one of the most powerful forces in the known universe but there’s a force that’s even more powerful. A force whose power you can choose to harness for yourself. A powerful force others will harness against you if you let them. This force’s name? Compound interest.

The Magic Dollar

How One Family Earns $100,000 But Pays just $11.25 in Taxes

The deadline for taxes in the United States is April 18^th this year. That’s coming up much more quickly than you think and if you haven’t done your taxes yet this year it’s nearly time. Before getting to collecting all of your tax forms and filing your paperwork, however, I’d like to introduce you to a family that’s about to do their taxes. We’ll call them the Savers: Mom Saver, Dad Saver, and Baby Saver.

Like many Americans the Savers don’t mind doing their share in paying the portion of taxes they owe. But they also know that good ole’ Uncle Sam offers them lots of incentives and programs with which they can save on their taxes. For 2015 the Savers decided they were going to make the most of these opportunities and see just how low they could get their taxable income and, thus, how little they could pay in federal taxes. Between the two of them Mom and Dad Saver earned a combined $100,000/year and they file jointly. Let’s dig in to see how they do on their savings.

The Deadly Costs of Lifestyle Creep

When I was in college I used to do something I called “ramen math.” It was the time towards the end of the month when money was really tight as you waited for your next paycheck, and to make every dollar stretch you had to get creative about every expense. How long could you live on just ramen? Would anyone notice if you walked out of the dining hall on campus with food in a plastic container? The most dire was getting gas: I’d go to the gas station/restaurant I worked at, fill up my car with gas, write a check to pay for it that I knew would bounce, then pick up my paycheck for the week and race to deposit it before they could deposit my check. Ramen math was an embarrassing but necessary part of my life and I knew that someday, someday I’d put it behind me and always have enough money.

The Great Diaper Debate

My wife and I are having our first kid in about a month and no matter how frugal you are having a kid costs money. How much? Depends on who you ask, but estimates peg it at approximately $250,000 and that’s before considering paying for college. A quarter ‘mil is pretty expensive even if you don’t pay it all upfront so we set out to examine a few ways to minimize those costs. Up first? Diapers.

How to lose $1,000,000 on Your 401k

February means it’s tax season and in 2016 you have until Monday, April 18^th to file without facing penalties. For many of us doing our civic duty is a bit of a pain; sure it’s nice driving on public streets, sending the kids to public schools, and living in a generally stable society, but why do I have to pay so much of the burden? The answer is: you don’t!

There was a time in America when saving for retirement wasn’t financially viable. A century and a half ago “poorhouses” existed to take in the infirm who, after a lifetime of working 80 hour weeks doing manual labor for a meager existence, found themselves destitute and incapable of generating additional income. They were sent off to live alone, under-cared for, and impoverished until they died. Luckily a horrified nation decided, “We can do better.”

The end result featured a strengthening of things like pensions and the creation of Social Security. Eventually the government decided there was a benefit for society in creating programs that incentivized people to save for the future privately as well. The best way to incentivize them? Pay them money! That’s how the 401k was invented.

5 Things You Spend Too Much on (and How to Save Thousands!)

One of the saddest realities of living in America is the simple fact that nearly two-thirds of us have less than $1,000 in savings. That means the average American can’t afford a sudden medical expense or car repair without taking on costly debt. How did we get ourselves into this position? For most of us it’s because we spend too much on things we imagine we need. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are five things Americans spend too much money on and how you can cut your costs and save.