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How Much Do You Need to Retire?

Challenging Fidelity’s Retirement Guidelines Fidelity Investments is a powerhouse when it comes to retirement planning and advice. They also know the importance of explaining concepts to people in easy-to-understand terms. I have seen see a lot of their advice recently, most likely because I’m approaching retirement age. I’m rather good with numbers, so I figured … Read more

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Settling the Roth versus Traditional Debate

Finance Myth #2 Traditional Plans are Better than Roths Depending on your crystal ball for income tax rates, there really is a better choice when it comes to putting your retirement funds in a Roth or traditional IRA, 401(k) or 403(b) account. We’re going to prove this point by crunching the numbers, so you don’t … Read more

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Prepaying your Mortgage

When does prepaying make sense? For many of us, owning a home is the biggest financial decision we will ever make in our lives. According to the latest data gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau, of the 77 million owner-occupied homes in the United States, 62.3% of these homes have a first mortgage. Let’s figure … Read more

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Using BMI to Measure Health Risks

The pros and cons of calculating BMI Full disclosure, I’ve never been a fan of BMI because I’ve always fallen into the overweight category – until very recently. I played a variety of sports back in college and was in the best shape of my entire life at that time. But according to the published … Read more

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Avoiding High Rates of Depreciation

Tactics to slow down a car’s depreciation in value While it seems like an odd concept, the second you drive a new car off the dealer’s lot it’s worth substantially less than what you paid for it only moments earlier. This happens because several factors, including depreciation, affect a car’s long-term value. Fortunately, there are … Read more

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Sales Tax Made Easy

Some simple rules to help you calculate sales tax Outlined below are three super simple rules you can use to impress your houseguests and stun coworkers with your ability to calculate sales tax in your head. But before diving into those rules, the most important thing to remember is to ALWAYS preface your statements with … Read more

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Finally Launching – Please be Patient

It is a lot harder than it looks When I wrote the vision statement for Crunchopedia, I meant every word. I want every visitor to this website to say to themselves “This is the place for online calculators.” I want the calculators to be both useful and easy to use. The idea seems easy enough, … Read more