Andy | Saving to Invest

Gold Price Outlook for 2026: What’s Actually Driving the Rally (and How to Think About Buying)

Gold traded around $4,121 an ounce on July 10, 2026, up about 22.8% from a year earlier. It's also down slightly over the past month, which is the point: gold moves, and I'm not going to pretend I know where it goes next. What I can do is lay out…

Apartment Rental Tips for 2026: What to Check Before You Sign a Lease

The national average apartment rent was $1,742 a month in June 2026, up slightly from May, according to Apartments.com's rent report, while the Census Bureau's rental vacancy rate has climbed to around 7.2–7.3% — one of the highest readings in years. That combination (rents drifting up, vacancies also up) means…

Budgeting Pitfalls in 2026 — Why Most Budgets Fail and How to Fix It

Inflation was running around 4.2% year-over-year as of May 2026, the highest reading since 2023. If your budget's numbers are from last year — or longer — they're already stale, and that gap is usually where the "I don't know where my money went" feeling comes from. Budgeting itself doesn't…

Am I Being a Cheapskate or Just Frugal?

In an argument with my wife over our holiday spending on gifts, travel and entertainment, I got accused of being a cheapskate because I refused to put aside money/budget worries during the holiday season. “What’s the point of saving if we cannot spend the money on the ones we love?”…

Stock Market Volatility in 2026: Why Now Is Still Not the Time to Sell

The S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 7,621 in June 2026, slid more than 4% into mid-July on AI-spending doubts, then round-tripped the whole move and set a fresh all-time high of 7,730.99 on August 26 — before wobbling again at the very end of the month as a…

How to Choose a Health Insurance Plan: 10 Tips for 2026–2027 Open Enrollment

Choosing a health plan is now a five-figure decision. The average employer family plan costs $26,993 a year in premiums, with workers paying about $6,850 of that from their paychecks, per the latest KFF employer survey. Pick the wrong plan and you can easily leave a few thousand dollars on…

What a Strong or Weak Dollar Actually Means for Your Money in 2026

The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) — a measure of the dollar against a basket of six major currencies — has been trading around 100 to 101 in mid-2026, after the Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.50%-3.75% at its June 17 meeting. That's a meaningfully stronger dollar than the…

10 Car Buying Tips to Get a Great Deal in 2026

The average new car now sells for around $50,000, and the average auto loan carries a 6.4%-7% interest rate in 2026. Used car prices aren't much of an escape either, averaging roughly $26,000 nationally. That combination makes negotiating harder to skip than it used to be — a few smart…

Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs): How They Work and Whether They’re Worth It

A dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) takes the cash dividend a stock or fund pays you and automatically uses it to buy more shares — instead of depositing it in your account as cash. It's been around since the 1960s, and most brokerages now offer it as a free, one-time setting…

Facing Higher Taxes? Four Strategies That Actually Move the Needle in 2026

Tax bills go up for a lot of reasons — a raise, a bonus, selling an investment, or just bracket creep as your income grows. Whatever the cause, there are concrete, legal strategies that reduce what you actually owe, separate from whatever political debate is happening in Washington about future…

Reverse Mortgages in 2026: Pros, Cons, and the New $1,249,125 Lending Limit

Reverse mortgages let homeowners age 62 and older convert home equity into cash without selling or taking on a monthly payment. The federally insured version — a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) — is still the most common way to do this, and the program looks meaningfully different than it…

21 Signs You’re Losing Interest in Your Job (and What to Do About It)

We've all hit that wall — a stretch where work feels more like a chore than anything close to engaging. Feeling uninterested for a few days is normal. It becomes worth paying attention to when it drags on for weeks and starts showing up in your actual behavior. Here are…

The A to Z of Good Personal Finance: My Saving and Investing Philosophy

I wrote the first version of this list back in 2008 — which tells you something: the fundamentals of good personal finance don't change much. What changes is the context around them. Interest rates, tax rules, available tools. But the underlying principles? Still the same. A — Avoid paying credit…

Teaching Kids to Invest in 2026 — From Piggy Banks to Trump Accounts

Teaching a child to save doesn't start with a lecture about the stock market — it starts with a goal they actually want and real money they control. Here's a practical, step-by-step approach, plus a genuinely new tool: the federal Trump Accounts program that launched July 4, 2026. Step 1:…