Reaching Goals Proven to Make Us Happy

Experiencing earned success brings satisfaction and happiness. Earned success is when you work hard to achieve your goals, whether it’s money or following your passion.
The University of Chicago’s General Social Survey showed that people who say they feel “very successful” or “completely successful” in their work lives are twice as likely to say they are very

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Become Resilient to Cope with Adversity and Improve Relationships

Resiliency helps you to cope with and bounce back from adversity. Building your resilience will help improve your relationships at work and at home.
There are four types of resiliency.
Physical Relience requires a healthy and balanced diet, regular physical activity, adequate sleep and self-care.
Cognitive or mental resilience describes attention, judgment and decision-making skills, during both good

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Have the Right Temperament for Investing

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful investors, famously claimed that the most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. To be successful, you need to stay calm and rational during the market’s boom and bust cycles and avoid falling victim to the market’s herd instincts.
Even during dull market days, it takes

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Pay Yourself First with Easy Dollar-Cost Averaging

Saving and investing isn’t hard, but to make it easy you need to treat it like a bill. When your paycheck comes in each month, you pay your bills, right? So treat investing like a bill. If you want to max out your Roth IRA, divide the maximum contribution by 12 and send that amount

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Your Career - Signs it May Have Stalled and How to Get it Back on Track

Signs Your Career Has Stalled
Your career can lose power for many reasons: a lack of opportunities, industry changes and plain old boredom are just a few of them.
Are you wondering whether your career has stalled? Here are some of the top warning signs, according to experts:
1. Your role and responsibilities haven’t changed in a few

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Debt Problem - Signs to Look For - When to Get Help to Control Debt

The line between a future of financial solvency and one of distress is thinner than you might think.
Unfortunately, many people don’t realize they’re on the wrong side of that divide until it’s too late.
You could call it the ostrich syndrome. You know that things aren’t good, but you just don’t want to face up to

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How to Hurt Your Credit Score Without Really Trying

You don’t have to put a lot of effort into it to hurt your credit score. Just a misstep or two is all that’s required.
Let’s look at a few ways your credit card could get dinged.
Paying Late
Credit card companies are notoriously prickly about late payments — even a payment that’s late by a few

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Reduce Spending and Debt by Looking at Variable Expenses

The best way to begin getting the debt and spending under control is to reduce your monthly expenses. And one good place to start is to focus on reducing your variable expenses.
Variable expenses include those that can be changed or eliminated entirely.
Variable expenses are those that fluctuate each month, such as clothing, food, entertainment, vacations,

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Pay Down Debt or Save for Retirement?

As important as it is to start saving for retirement early, you may be better off tackling your consumer debt first. In some cases, the amount of debt you have not only affects your budget today, but it can significantly limit your options in the future. So if you’re contemplating whether to pay down your

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When Not to File for College Financial Aid

When it comes to filling out financial aid forms there are some families that have high incomes or a lot of wealth that have every reason to question whether it is worth the effort.
First, check to see how you stand for aid eligibility by going to collegeboard.com and use the College Board’s Expected Financial Contribution, or

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Prosocial Spending Makes Us Happy - But We Tend to Spend for Personal Needs

Can money buy happiness? Much research has been done that shows that income has a reliable, but weak, relationship with being happy. While incomes have surged in recent decades, happiness levels have remained static, showing no sign of people being happier as a result of their increased income.
A University of British Columbia study (”Spending Money

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Create an Interview Portfolio Showing Your Knowledge, Skills, Achievements and Abilities

When you are on a job search you want to give an employer reasons to hire you. You want to showcase your education and work experience by providing persuasive evidence of your work, skills and accomplishments.
So create a portfolio, an historical scrapbook that address common interview question categories such as team-building, problem-solving, leadership, management, culture

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Money Can Give You the Happy, Financial Freedom to Pursue Your Passion

Ideally, you want to spend each day engaged in activities that you find absorbing and satisfying, that you feel you’re good at – and where you feel you’re doing good.
Indeed, happy retirees are typically those who have a sense of purpose, whether it’s volunteering for their favorite causes, coaching a children’s sports team, helping their church

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Not Worrying about Money - Being Financially Happy

There are plenty of rich people who constantly worry about money. But, in general, if you save diligently you are going to eventually find yourself at a point where financial worries are relatively rare – you’ll find that you are in a state of financially happiness.
The feeling of being financially happy isn’t just for the wealthy. If

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Life on the Day You Retire - How to Spend, Invest, Manage Income and Health Care

On the day you retire your life changes.
How You Invest When You Retire
On the day you retire, you should still have money invested for the long term. Moving all of your money out of stocks and into bonds and bank accounts is an overly cautious approach that increases the likelihood that you won’t be able to afford your

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How to Work from Home and Avoid a Commute: Plan for Success

Here are some tips on how to work from home.
Set up your workspace
Setting a laptop on your kitchen table can make it difficult to focus and get anything done. Instead, have a designated work area where you “go to work.” Specifying a workspace draws boundaries. Tell family members who are home with you that when

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Working: Having a Job in the Suburbs Can be a Lifestyle Challenge

Having a job in the suburbs can alter your lifestyle. It can change your social life, your travel time to work and your ability to network in your industry, so it’s important to consider the benefits and challenges before you accept.
Working in the suburbs can rule out the use of public transportation to get around,

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Take Control of Your Saving and Asset Allocation to Reduce Your Risk

Your investing goal should be to invest with the understanding that while the growth potential of your nest egg may be out of your control, there are steps you can take to come as close as possible to realizing whatever that potential is.
Taking Control
You need to work really hard on the controllable factors, starting with an aggressive savings

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When You Buy an Annuity What to Look For In the Insurance Company

When you buy an annuity you enter into a long-term relationship with the insurance company that offers the product. For this reason, your primary consideration when comparing annuity products is the financial strength of the insurance company behind the product.
An annuity contract can last for decades, and you need a financial partner that will be around

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Get an Annuity to Meet Your Goal and Financial Objective

When you shop for an annuity look for one that is right for your goal and objective.
High Level of Guaranteed Income Now
If your objective is to generate the highest possible amount of guaranteed monthly income starting now, you will want to look at a single-premium immediate fixed annuity. Single premium means that you are paying for

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