Savvy Money Blog
I want to learn about…
Learn from our Experts.
Get $avvy financial tips. Read an article today!
Money New Year’s Resolution
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAThis time of the year, inevitably, conversations gravitate toward the topic of New Year’s resolutions. While the vast majority tend to be not only generic (stop smoking, anyone? Join a gym?), but also difficult to follow (everyone has an...
Retirement Savings Dos and Don’ts
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAI had dinner with my best friends last night – a monthly tradition that usually turns into a full night of fun. Not this time, however. It turned out my friends were all in a state over their retirement accounts. Their mutual funds invested...
Real Estate: Reading the Fine Print Before You Commit
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAReading the Fine Print Before You CommitAfter December’s holiday festivities, January can feel like a dreary, lonely month. So you can imagine how delighted I was when I picked up the mail the other week and found an invitation to a...
Job Loss – Now What?
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAWe all know someone who lost his or her job last year. For my husband’s friend, though, it seemed to happen out of the blue – he is a news producer at a major news station. But with dwindling demand for advertising time, many stations are...
What Size Mortgage Can You Afford?
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAWith real estate prices free falling in many areas, mortgages seem to be the topic on everyone’s minds. It is hard to narrow down all the different concerns people have into a structured format, but my facilitators report that one of the...
Credit Card Myths
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAI went for a run in the park this morning, with my favorite workout pal. Thank goodness she is a good friend as I don’t run as fast as I used to now being pregnant. Anyways, she surprised me mid-run by asking whether it was really necessary...
Scoring a Mortgage in Turbulent Times
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFA“For years,” a woman said during a recent telephone conference, “I was waiting for the real estate bubble to burst so that I could buy something. Now that it finally has, no one can get a mortgage.”While it is true that it is much more...
Money Making Tips for Tough Times
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAOne of my mom’s friends has a daughter who studied interior design, and then scored an assistant manager position in an upscale furniture store right out of college. She was estatic, loving everything about her job . . . until last week,...
How Much Debt Is Too Much?
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAI was in back-to-back meetings all day today. This is not unusual – neither is the fact that four consecutive meetings started out with a prospective client informing me that she had come to me because she is in debt and would like to...
The iPod Issue: How Much Can -and Should- You Spend on Your Children?
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAI took the subway uptown today, to meet a colleague at a favorite lunch place. Turns out, the subway I was in also had twenty-something ten-year-olds, on a field trip coming back from the New York Stock Exchange. As Sebastian is only three,...
Should You Do Your Own Taxes?
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAMy college friend was red-faced and bursting with anger when we met for after-work cocktails the other day. She arrived straight out of a meeting with her tax accountant, who had failed yet again to get her the tax refund so many people...
Credit Card Overwhelmed: Notes on Debt Consolidation
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFA“My credit cards are driving me insane,” a friend complained to me over mochas (bought with cash) yesterday morning. “It’s like I can’t stop thinking about how much debt I’m in, because the minute I’ve sent off one minimum payment, I get a...
Top Financial Fears
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAThis weekend, my family and I decided to go for a picnic in the park. So we filled a basket with Dean & Deluca foods and headed outside our door to Battery Park. There, the smell of grass, the sun, and the majestic beauty of the skyline...
How to Manage Student Loans
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAA young woman at a recent Savvy Ladies seminar had just received her first student loan bill, and subsequently, her first panic attack. What was she supposed to do? There was no way she could spare that much money per month. Could she make...
Shrinking Your Bills
“The problem with saving,” the woman on the elliptical next to me at the gym the other day told me, upon learning that I am a financial planner, “is that it’s so boring. I feel like I can never do anything fun.”This, fortunately, couldn’t be less true. Try the tips...
Selecting Your Stocks: Technical Analysis
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAIn the last entry, an email I received inspired a discussion about fundamental stock analysis. This entry covers its counterpart, technical analysis.According to technical analysis, value is truly in the eyes of the beholder. Rather than...
Selecting Your Stocks: Fundamental Analysis
I got an email from a client this morning, raving about this exceptional new stock everyone was talking about. It had already tripled since going public, and all the charts looked amazing.Curious, of course, I went online to do some research. The company was in the...
Laid Off? How to Get Back on Track
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAI think most of us know someone who has lost his or her job recently. To me, this recession became a reality when a client called mid-afternoon (and mid-latte) yesterday to let me know her company had let her go. Now, being a long term...
Money Management for Couples: What to Do When Your Opinions Differ
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFASomething interesting happened in my latest Savvy Ladies telephone conference. When one woman told the group that her husband’s sloppy attitude toward money was so frustrating to her, she wanted to divorce him for this reason alone, every...
Lending Money to Family and Friends
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAI received an interesting email this morning. It was from a mother-of-two in her early thirties, who was broke because over the past five years, her parents had continuously borrowed money from her, supposedly to get into some miraculous...
Securing Your Job in Shaky Times
by Stacy Francis, CFP®, CDFAAt the bar in my favorite Asian fusion restaurant the other day, waiting for a table, my hubby and I overheard an interesting conversation between two twenty-something women. Apparently, one of them had lost her job earlier that day, and...