Other than when the stock market crashes or another ten thousand people get pink slips, you never hardly hear anyone mention the economy, do you? Most people (you, perhaps?) view the economy as some external force over which nobody has any control. You feel like a victim of this capricious force and you can "only hope for the best".

Wrong on both counts.

The economy "happens" whether the news mentions it or not. No, it's not capricious. And no, you needn't be a victim.

Is an annuity a good investment? This is a surprisingly hard question to answer.

If you have ever met with a financial advisor about investments, chances are he or she may have proposed annuities as a good way for you to go. However, when you scan the blogosphere for posts about investing, you hardly ever read about annuities. You read about index funds, mutual funds, stocks and real estate and now and then about bonds … but hardly ever anything about annuities. Continue reading...

Bonds can be great low-risk investments but chances are you have never purchased a bond ... and probably never will.

Same with me.

Fire can be one of the most destructive forces on earth, and yet some say civilization began when we figured out how to harness its power. Credit cards are the same. Ask any long-time reader of Get Rich Slowly if credit cards are good for anything, and you might get a response like: “They're to be ripped up and burned in an atmosphere-polluting bonfire of relief!”

There was good reason to hold that opinion back then. In the days leading up to the Great Recession, a lot of consumers were getting burned by the trap of easy credit and conspicuous consumption. Frankly, the weight of his own credit card debt is what spurred J.D. Roth to start Get Rich Slowly in 2006.

It's easy to visualize the situation from the chart below. Credit card debt was becoming the largest category of non-mortgage debt in America at that time.

Millions rely on financial professionals to do their investing for them but not everyone knows how to hire a financial planner the right way -- or when to say no to one.

On the surface, the rationale for hiring a financial planner or advisor seems valid. People feel intimidated by the whole investing thing. It seems like a jungle out there and, to boot, most people know someone who lost it all with bad investments. Others believe they just don't have enough time to learn about investing or to maintain their investments on an ongoing basis.

It's so common, we don't even recognize it as a mindset: Instead of changing our own car's oil, cleaning our pools or windows, mowing our lawns, doing our own taxes or our own nails, we get someone else to do it, someone who specializes in that particular endeavor. We tell ourselves we don't like doing that thing and, besides, they do a better job, so why not get an expert to do it? After all, we can afford it.

[This is Part II of a two-part series on how banks affect our everyday lives. Part I was Money matters: How money works.]

"The bank" has been a standard villain in the movies since the earliest days. In fact, it wouldn't be the holidays without Jimmy Stewart reminding us how wonderful life could be without Mr. Potter, the banker villain.

[This is Part I of a two-part series on banking -- what it does, and can do, for you. Part II is 5 things banks do for you that's really important.]

What is money? Seriously, answer the question: What do you say is money? Everyone thinks they have a basic idea what money is, but no two people will come up with the same definition. And chances are none of them are correct.

In order to understand what money really is, we need to first look at its uses and then at the history of banking, because money and banking are so intertwined as to be inseparable.

The holidays are upon us. It's the time of the year when family moves from the shadows of a busy life to the foreground. That probably makes it as good a time as any to consider one of the most difficult topics to discuss pertaining to family and finances -- the subject of inheritances. Nobody wants to talk about it because it is inextricably linked with, well, death. Someone has to die for an inheritance to come about, and none of us enjoys looking a loved one in the eye and saying, "Hey loved one, you are going to go the way of all flesh soon, so can we talk about what you are going to leave behind?"

How Family Disputes Over Inheritances Arise

When a dispute arises over an inheritance, it can help to recognize some of the issues that might be contributing to the problem developing between family members -- and there are a number of things to consider:

Back in 2005, someone wrote that Priceline.com would be a good stock in which to invest. At the time, I used Priceline because I traveled frequently. I also knew of Peter Lynch's investing-for-success strategy, which boils down to buying stock in companies you do business with. I looked at the stock, which traded for around $20 to $25 at the time, thought about it … and passed. Was that smart?

Had I invested $1,000 back then, that investment would be worth about $55,000 today, just 10 years later. Priceline is but one of a hundred maximize-return stories you hear every day.

Not every investment is that good. I could also have invested the $1,000 in Yahoo at that time. That investment, however, would only be worth $850 today. The same investment in Bank of America would be worth less than $400 today. We call that risk. Continue reading...

Even if you've never made an overt decision to invest in the stock market, stocks form the foundation of your retirement investing. (At least if you're like the vast majority of Americans, they do.) That's because your 401(k) -- or equivalent employer retirement plan -- is only allowed to invest in mutual funds, and most mutual funds invest in the stock market.

If you are investing through a Roth IRA account, though, you do have options. You can invest in mutual funds (of which index funds are a subset) or you can buy stocks individually. Does that mean you should buy individual stocks for your Roth IRA?