What's More Important: An Emergency Fund or Being Debt Free?

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Having an emergency fund is one of the most important steps to financial freedom, but if you listen to some personal finance pundits, it's not as important as being debt free. (Dave Ramsey, I'm looking at you.)
When you're financially free, you're out of debt and have a 3-6 month emergency fund, but when you're just [...]

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Self-Employment Taxes: What You Need to Know

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This guest post comes from Michael, a contributing editor of the Dough Roller, a personal finance and investing blog, and Credit Card Offers IQ, a credit card review site.
Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to be able to leave my 9-5 job and work on my own as a contractor. Setting my own [...]

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Do the Wealthy Really Earn What They Produce?

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In a comment from my post on How to Cut the Federal Deficit, there was objection to taxing the wealthy at higher rates.
The comment said: "Remember – they [the wealthy] worked hard for that money, and free markets determined what they do is of such high value."
I did not suggest it was fair or unfair, [...]

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Ask the Readers: Have You Filed Your Taxes Yet?

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Even though I have all of my W-2s, 1099s and other tax documents, I've been pushing off filing my taxes for this year.
I'm not really sure why — probably just because I am super busy with work, life, etc. — but it's one of those things where I keep telling myself to just take an [...]

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Who's to Blame for College Financial Aid Shortfalls?

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The Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, recently released a report titled "Opportunity Adrift" that criticizes the financial aid practices of public universities. The report used data from 2003 to 2007.
The report accuses public research universities of increasing the amount of aid to students whose parents make at least $115,000 a year by 28 percent [...]

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The Paper Documents You Actually Need to Keep

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In an age of online banking and bill pay, it's easy and makes a ton of sense to go paperless, especially when it comes to the traditional bank and bill statements you've been getting in the mail for years.
But for as many documents that we can store digitally, there are a few items that you [...]

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How to Cut the Federal Deficit

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I clipped a news article way back on August 11, 2005 when the Associated Press reported President Bush's comments on a new transportation-spending bill.
According to the article, "President Bush calls the massive $286.4 billion transportation spending bill he signed into law Wednesday a job creator."
The article goes on to describe the bill that will pay [...]

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