When purchasing gold jewelry, you want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. It’s a large investment after all. It’s important to find the information needed in order to recognize your investment goals and develop a plan from there so that you can feel confident about your purchase.

How To Tell Quality: Carats

Carat grade is the unit of measure used to convey the quality and amount of gold in an alloy. Fine gold is 24 carat or 99.999% pure.

Because of its malleable consistency, gold must be mixed (or alloyed) with various other harder metals in order to strengthen and bond it, which makes 100% pure gold virtually impossible to refine. This alloying process may change the color of the gold as well. Copper, silver, zinc, nickel, manganese, and tin are the metals utilized in the alloying procedure. [Read more…]

For years, banks have been the first thing that comes to mind when figuring out where to deposit your money. However, in recent years, people have shifting their money to credit unions in response to the irresponsible wary that big banks have handled their money.

Many see credit unions as a way to invest their money without worry that their bank will gamble with their retirement on Wall Street. However, the stigma surrounding credit unions is that regardless of how safe they are, they provide less options and opportunities for growth than larger banks. This is simply not true. In fact, you can actually save money by switching to a credit union. [Read more…]

Fraud and identity theft have been around since the dawn of man, but the invention of the telephone and other mass communications devices made it much easier for fraudsters to perform their evil tricks.

And now, in the age of the Internet when virtually everyone carries a telephone and web browser around in their pockets, the frequency of identity theft and fraud has increased exponentially.

Every time you open an email from someone you don’t recognize or visit a website that you’re unfamiliar with, you open yourself up to the possibility of becoming the victim of a fraudster. And of course there are still countless ways to fall for a scam in the offline world as well. [Read more…]

Mortgage loans can be very challenging to pay off, especially if you are having trouble with your finances. Though it may seem like your mortgage payment will never disappear, it is completely capable of happening. In order for you to get rid of your biggest debt, you may want to consider some of these tips below:

1 – Assess your finances. Take a look at your current financial standing. You can do this by checking your investments, savings, total income, and other related accounts. Then assess your situation.

By doing simple things like creating a monthly budget, we can see where all our money is going and how much we have left over to put towards our mortgage. From there, you can start making the necessary steps to pay off your mortgage loan. This step is very crucial before anything else. [Read more…]

These days, we’re all looking for ways to stem the flow of our cash outlays. Sometimes this can leave you feeling like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. However, in many instances we make very wasteful decisions without really thinking about it.

Here are just 5 drains on your income that you’d do well to avoid:

1 – The Lottery

Frequently referred to as a “tax on stupidity”, lotteries run by both local and national governments offer those optimistic enough to buy a ticket with such phenomenally long odds of winning, they make casinos seem positively altruistic.

Admittedly, if you buy a ticket, you just might win, but the list of things more likely to happen is long and illustrious, including being struck by lightning among many other far-fetched scenarios. [Read more…]