15 ways to ruin your financial future

We are doing a terrible job saving for retirement. The median 401(k) plan balance is a paltry $18, 986!While there is raging debate over how much you need to save in order to retire with dignity, everyone would agree that most Americans are falling far short of achieving this goal.So how much do...

Fresh out of school, we often face the choice between taking a better-paying job with no long range potentional or a low-paying one with advancement potential. For twenty-somethings, the former, the dead-end job, can become a golden handcuff that costs you hugely in the long run. I made just this...

Divorce is usually painful, messy and expensive in the short run. Ask Phil Collins, who recently paid out $47 million for his third divorce. But the financial pain of divorce doesn't always end when the forms are signed, but can linger on into retirement. The immediate costs put a large cash hit...

Ahh, youth. It's great and all. If it just weren't so tied up with the twin threats of "ignorance" and "inflated sense of one's own invincibility." When you are young, somehow you believe you will always be young, and if you are rich, you believe that it will only increase in frequency and...

I married for love, not money, but I wished I had asked my husband more questions about the latter before we tied the knot. It wasn't until after the wedding that I learned about his six-figure student loans and credit-card balance of $15,000. For someone who prides herself on paying off her card...

Education, we're told when we're young, is the ticket to freedom. Work hard, go to school, and you can do anything your ability allows, regardless of who your parents are.Unfortunately, rapidly rising college costs and ever-increasing student debt loads threaten that American dream.A 2008 Yale...

I live in Detroit, where taking public transportation isn't an option. I'd be a lot richer if it were. Instead, I spend a lot of money on cars and insurance, compensating for other people's poor driving habits.Driving stupid is expensive.The National Safety Council estimated in 2006 that the...

The latest market meltdowns probably have you downright jittery, and rightfully so. It's pretty scary when big investment firms and other financial institutions end up needing a life raft. The stock market's lost a lot of value, your 401k is in the toilet and, well, you might feel like Chicken...

The place was a dream: zebra wood kitchen cabinets, granite counter tops, and three bedrooms. It was also a lofty $300,000 more than our budget. But rather than being sane and telling our realtor no, I went home to crunch the numbers. I did it three times before I accepted that there was no way we...