All Articles - Page 11

Saving money is about more than dropping your spare change into a jar on your coffee table (though that's a good start). It's about having a plan to manage your money responsibly - a plan that you can reasonably maintain successfully both now and in the future.

Debt has become ingrained in American culture. Today, few of us can imagine a car without payments, a house without a mortgage, or a college student without a loan. In addition to these debts, Americans are also carrying a significant amount of credit card debt.

Financial difficulties can be challenging. If you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you have bills to pay, without enough to cover them, then you understand financial hardship. Financial hardships occur when you lack the money to pay for your necessary expenses, and taking on debt or missing payments might seem like your only solution.

Getting laid off from your job or having your hours reduced can be stressful. That job was how you were able to provide for yourself and your family. It put a roof over your head and food on the table. When you lose your job, your income grinds to a halt. Unfortunately, the same can not be said about your expenses. There are still bills to pay, even when you aren’t making money.

Toward the end of 2019, economic experts began noticing a new trend in household debt. That’s because the state of household debt experienced a dramatic upswing in 2019, according to a recent New York Federal Bank Study. The surge of household debt that happened in 2019 is the most significant annual increase we’ve seen since what we saw right before the last economic recession, during 2007.