Try our 30-day challenge to get better with your money |
April is Financial Literacy Month, which means now is a great time to take stock of your personal finances and make plans to improve them. To get started, CNBC Make It has a 30-day money challenge: one small move per day to help you boost your savings, tackle your debt and build a more successful future. If you haven't started yet, you still have time to catch up. Here are the tips from days 1 through 5. Day 1: Identify your money goals and values. Before embarking on a financial journey, you need a road map. Think about the things that are most important to you and try to distill those values into clear money goals. Day 2: Find an accountability buddy. There's setting goals, and then there's sticking to them. You're more likely to follow through with your plans if you share them with a friend or family member who can hold you accountable. Day 3: Open a high-yield savings account. Everyone needs a place to park their cash, and if you have a regular old bank account, you're missing out. Some high-yield savings accounts pay an annual interest rate north of 4.5%, compared with an average rate of 0.23% among savings accounts, per Bankrate. Day 4: Start saving for a short-term goal. Now that you're earning a respectable yield on your cash, start socking away money for a short-term goal. It's OK to start small; getting into the habit of saving regularly takes time. Day 5: Figure out how long it will take you to get out of debt. If outstanding debt is dragging down your financial strategy, create a plan to pay it off. Use Make It's loan calculator to estimate your monthly payments, how long it will take to get into the black and how much you'll pay in interest. |
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A last-second tax move that's good year-round Better late than never, right? You have until Tax Day — April 18 this year — to make contributions to a traditional or Roth individual retirement account for tax year 2022. The same goes for health savings accounts. Haven't filed your taxes yet? Contributing to a pretax account, such as a traditional IRA or an HSA, can lower your taxable income for last year, so it's a popular last-minute move. But waiting until the 11th hour to make contributions every year can cost you. You have about a 16-month window each year to invest — from Jan. 1 until Tax Day the following year. By investing at the end of that window, you forgo 16 months of potential returns. And because of the historical upward trajectory of the stock market, missing those months can make a big difference over the course of your life as an investor. Consider the case of two investors who each make a $6,500 contribution to an IRA each year and earn a 6% annualized return. One invests each year in January. The other waits until April of the following year. After 30 years, the January investor will have amassed about $358,000, compared with about $319,000 for the April investor, according to calculations from Vanguard. The price of procrastination: $39,000. Generally, pros say, invest as much as you can as early as you can. If you receive a big tax refund this year, consider contributing to investment accounts as soon as possible to maximize the effects of compounding interest on your money. |
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Next Gen Investing: NFT collector accidentally destroyed a $129,000 CryptoPunk |
On March 25, Brandon Riley tweeted that he accidentally destroyed his CryptoPunk #685, a non-fungible token he had purchased weeks earlier for 77 ether, worth about $129,437 at the time. Riley was attempting to "wrap" his NFT, a process that allows the unique, digital collectible to trade on online marketplaces such as OpenSea or Rarible. While following a guide for how to complete the transaction, he accidentally sent his NFT to a so-called burn address. Those are typically used to permanently destroy tokens to create scarcity among investors and collectors. Essentially, instead of storing the NFT in a digital wallet with a private key only he had, he sent it to a wallet with no key at all. Thanks to the largesse of fellow crypto folks, Riley was able to get his CryptoPunk "resurrected" in a slightly different form. Usually though crypto transactions are permanent. To avoid making an irreversible mistake with crypto-related assets, be sure to thoroughly research and review any software you use to store or transfer digital funds or collectibles. And once you're signed up, a password manager can be helpful for recalling the multiple, complex passwords you'll need to access your digital wallet. |
Worth the Money: Renpho eye massager |
I'm at constant war with my dry eyes. I take prescription drops to keep things from getting too bad, but sometimes I've been out late in my contact lenses or sat under a fan or spent a zillion hours in front of a computer screen, and it all seems moot. That's when I bring in the heavy artillery. The Renpho eye massager (currently $69.99 at Amazon) provides a warm compress for the areas around your eyes to go along with a gentle massage and soothing music. (You can connect to bluetooth if you don't like the preset spa sounds.) Every time I turn it off, it thanks me for using it. The feeling is mutual. —Ryan Ermey, Senior Money Reporter |
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