Saving and Investing Archives – Michele Cagan, CPA

How to Prioritize Your Debt

10/22/2020
Managing Debt, Protect Your Financial Future, Saving and Investing, Single Mom CPA

Covering your essentials and tackling financially-damaging debt Please Note: This article contains affiliate links. If you click on those links, I may receive compensation. When it comes to managing debt, single moms have extra struggles to deal with. But we manage to overcome those hurdles and keep making strides to pay off debt and build net worth. Then 2020 happened, and for many of us our financial progress got knocked off track. According to a survey by Lending Tree, 56% of parents have gone into debt during this Covid crisis… and it’s even harder on single moms. But that doesn’t…

How to Open a Roth IRA in Under 30 Minutes

10/07/2020
Building a Nest, investing, personal finance, Protect Your Financial Future, retirement, Retirement Planning, Saving and Investing, Single Mom CPA, taxes, The Basics, Uncategorized

You need to do this today. Single moms – women in general, actually – are waaayyyyyy behind when it comes to retirement savings. We all have plenty of reasons for this… but when we’re 80 and out of money, those reasons won’t matter at all. So today we are going to take 30 minutes to open up Roth IRA accounts. We’re focusing on Roth IRAs specifically because you always have free and complete access to the money you put in. This takes a huge barrier out of the way of retirement savings: This money is not locked up, and you…

Avoid Target-Date Retirement Fund Traps

09/01/2020
Building a Nest, Protect Your Financial Future, Retirement Planning, Saving and Investing, Single Mom CPA, The Basics

What you don’t know about target-date funds can hurt you Note: This article contains affiliate links. I may receive compensation if you click on them. Thank you for your support. When your to-do list is already a mile too long, it’s tempting to go the easiest ways to get things done. That’s especially true when it comes to financial matters – like retirement savings – that seem complicated. That’s why so many single moms go with the hands-off, no-worries choice in their retirement plans: target date retirement funds. The whole point of these is to pick one, then ignore it…

Ladies, We Need to Save More for Retirement

10/26/2019
Retirement Planning, Saving and Investing, Single Mom CPA

Overcome Anti-Woman Retirement Obstacles to Fully Fund Your Future Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, I may receive a commission. It’s harder for women to save money for retirement – that’s just a fact. And that can leave many of us in a dicey situation when we’re ready to stop working, or can’t work anymore. The world throws a bunch of obstacles at us that can get in the way of building secure retirement nest eggs: We earn less than men, and that affects our entire lifetime earnings – when you start…

How to Set SMART Money Goals and Get Everything You Want

07/01/2019
Protect Your Financial Future, Saving and Investing, Single Mom CPA

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, I may receive a commission. You want to save money, but how? When you’re a single mom on a tight budget, saving for anything can feel impossible. The key to successful saving plans is setting SMART goals: SpecificMeasurableAchievableRealisticTime-oriented Framing your goals this way gives you a much better shot at reaching them and continuing forward financially. When you come up with your SMART savings goal, make sure to write it down. According to research, writing down your goal makes you 42% more likely to achieve it.…