SoFi Blog

On April 22, millions of people around the world will participate in Earth Day-related activities. Some people will march to raise awareness, some will plant trees, and some will take the time to clean up plastic and trash that has been carelessly discarded.

If you just landed a new job, well done! Whether it’s your first job or your fifth, starting the next chapter of your career journey with a new company and fresh challenges can be an exciting time.

It also can be a good opportunity to review your finances, put together a new budget, and work toward some monetary milestones, like paying down credit cards or student loan debt.

Why now? As your life changes, your needs and expenses likely will change as well. So when you’re starting a new job, it might be a fitting time to take a look at where you stand and where you want to go.

Family debt is never easy to tackle, but if a sibling is struggling with a significant amount of student loan debt, it can seem even more overwhelming. Should you help pay off your sibling’s student loans if you are financially secure enough to do it?

When offering money to a family member, it’s important to remember that doing so could change your relationship, even if you are offering to help reduce student loan debt for a sibling.

Due to rapidly advancing technology, today’s college students often face decisions that prior generations would never have needed to consider. This includes the use of social media and its effects, both positive and negative.

As you’ve probably figured out, there are numerous benefits to using social media to discover information, connect with friends and family , job hunt and so much more. But, there are also big buckets of negatives, ranging from wasting time, to false information being posted, cyberbullying and more.

Social media posts and profiles can have an impact, positive or negative, before you’ve even been accepted to your college of choice, and they can also both help and hurt your efforts to get a specific job, or advance in your career.

Tax season has a mixed effect on people. Some people dread it, while others look forward to it. On the one hand, doing taxes is a nuisance and it’s especially painful if you’re paying out of pocket.

On the other hand, it’s exciting to get a tax refund and think about how to put that extra money to use. Sometimes, a tax refund can be even bigger than a bonus or a paycheck, and without the income taxes.

In all, the IRS paid out $324 billion in tax refunds in 2018 . The average federal tax refund was $2,727. That’s a pretty good chunk of change.

If you are expecting a tax refund, it is worth your while to sit down and plan out what you want to do with the money. Otherwise, it might be too easy to spend the money just as fast as you received it.