Financial News Features

Establishing a strong credit history after you graduate from college can be tricky, especially if you have little on which to build. If you have a student loan account in good standing or have your own credit card with no missed payments, you’re off to a great start. There are numerous ways to build credit, whether you start from scratch or with a brief history of payments. The best strategy depends on your post-graduation plans — whether you aim to get a full-time job, a string of freelance gigs or travel the world for a year.

You could be coming into some money soon. According to the Internal Revenue Service, in 2016, 111 million Americans received tax refunds, with the average amount being $2,860.

There are an incredible number of people moving and shaking the existing global business environment. They're doing this by disrupting industries that previously were starting to feel a bit stale to those in those industries or reliant on their products and services.

According to November’s TD Bank’s Merry Money Survey, 78 percent of Americans believe they overspent during the holidays, and less than half of consumers planned to pay for holiday bills as they purchased things in the months leading up to those gift-giving finales.

The single biggest mistake I've seen repeatedly in 20 years can be summed up like this: believing ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes and doubting legitimate get-out-of-debt programs.

Howard Dvorkin, CPA and chairman of Debt.com, believes there’s something inherently wrong with the student loan process. “You can still be a teenager and owe tens of thousands of dollars – that’s ridiculous; rental car agencies won’t let you drive off the lot until you’re 25 because they don’t trust you with their expensive vehicle,” he says.