Personal Finance Advice and Commentary

If last year’s holiday season blew a hole in your budget, January could be the ideal time for you to start saving for this year’s gifts and festivities. One way to do that is to open a Christmas club account, according to Katherine Hutt, a spokeswoman at the national Council of Better Business Bureaus, or

Losing weight, exercising more and giving up cigarettes are good New Year’s resolutions. But what many people should have at the top of their 2012 to-do list is a promise to get out of debt and start living a financially healthier lifestyle. That’s according to the National Endowment for Financial Education, or NEFE, a Denver-based nonprofit

Consumers readying themselves for holiday expenses have spoken, and they’ve declared a strong preference for cash and debit cards, rather than credit cards or layaway programs this year. That’s according to a new online poll of 4,800 people by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or NFCC, in Silver Spring, Md. The poll found that