SoFi Blog

The holidays are a time for families to get together and share joy and thankfulness. But they’re also a time for mom or dad to probe their adult children about all kinds of “fun” topics like who they’re dating, when those grandkids will be on the way, when they’re going back to school for that master’s degree, and—you guessed it—how they’re dealing with money.

We wanted to learn more about the conversations parents have with their adult children around money, so we surveyed 1,003 parents in the United States—ages 36 to 65—during the month of November, and found some surprising results.

Monthly expenses add up quickly; including rent or a mortgage payment, car payments, student loan payments, and more. You routinely pay these bills each month, and then, almost as an afterthought, you try to figure out what’s left over to save for a rainy day or invest for financial growth. The concept of paying yourself first shakes up that routine.

When you pay yourself first, your top priority is to put a predetermined amount of money into personal savings and investment accounts. Depending on your expenses and income, the amount you save will vary.

When you focus on investing in your own financial wellbeing first, it helps to ensure your discretionary spending doesn’t cut into your financial growth. When you make paying yourself first a priority, it often makes sense to set up automatic transfers from your paycheck to your savings or investment account. If you’re ready to make yourself and your financial future a priority, these tips and strategies could help.

Maintaining a budget is hard at any time of year, but when the winter holiday season is on the horizon, and the time has come for gifts to be purchased, decorations to be pulled out and updated, and parties to be thrown and attended, budgeting can easily and quickly fall by the wayside.

While it’s no big deal to swap a restaurant meal for a home-cooked dinner during the year, it can feel like your best laid plans go to waste once Thanksgiving hits. Between holiday celebrations, extra treats for coworkers, travel plans, and more, it’s easy to see how, for Americans, the average Christmas debt is around $1,054.

The scariest part? While more than half of the respondents to a MagnifyMoney survey said they would pay down the debt in three months or less, around 30% said they would need five months or more to pay off the holiday debt on their credit card.

In order to avoid being part of that statistic—and avoid interest rates that could haunt you well into 2019—here are some budgeting tips as well as tips for how to manage credit card debt.

As the end of the year approaches, many of us find ourselves staring at our annual “to-do” list and wondering how none of it got done. Resolutions and to-dos have a funny way of building up at year-end like that, don’t they?

Luckily, there’s hope for us procrastinators. There is still plenty of time left in the year to take some action and feel accomplished by the ringing in of the new year. Cue the victory champagne (or hot chocolate, if that’s more your thing).

Below, we’ll cover some ideas for DIY projects for home that you can work on before the year comes to a close. Hopefully, this will help get the juices flowing on end-of-year projects so that you can finish the year on a high.

After the turkey’s been devoured, the wine consumed, and everyone is pleasantly stuffed (okay, overstuffed), millions of us head to the couch or the car to kick-start our holiday shopping. (You guessed it—this post is all about the Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts!)

Black Friday and Cyber Monday used to be two distinctly separate shopping holidays, but as online shopping becomes more and more prevalent, the two dates are merging into a weekend-long sale extravaganza.

In an attempt to stand out from all the noise on the actual day, some retailers will often start their Black Friday deals earlier in the week—and even extend their deals into December.

And by taking advantage of the steep discounts following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you can maximize your budget and get the gifts you’ve been eyeing.
While it can seem like almost everything is on sale from Thanksgiving all the way through the day after Christmas, there are certain buys that may be better deals than others.