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1 week ago | 
bankrate.com | Bernadette Joy |Katie Lowery
Living paycheck to paycheck isn’t just exhausting and stressful — it’s expensive. With inflation sticking around and new tariffs projected to cost American households up to $3,800 in 2025 (according to Yale’s Budget Lab), it’s more important than ever to build breathing room into your money plan to avoid late payment fees or borrowing to make it to payday. There’s one simple but powerful habit I use to break this cycle: I have built and maintained a cash-flow cushion.
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1 week ago | 
bankrate.com | Katie Lowery
Sometimes you have to learn by doing, even doing the wrong thing. And that’s true, unfortunately, in personal finance. Just ask Bankrate’s experts. Even they have regrets about their financial decision-making earlier in life: how they invested, where they socked away their savings and how they borrowed and repaid debt. But take their experiences to heart. Then you, hopefully, won’t have to learn the same lessons the hard way.
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1 week ago | 
bankrate.com | Bernadette Joy |Katie Lowery
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Every time we buy one of the Magnificent 7 stocks, shop with the largest online retailers or pay loan interest to a big-name bank, we’re putting money in the pockets of billionaires. To put their enormous wealth into perspective, if you make $50,000 a year, it would take 20,000 years to earn $1 billion, even if you didn’t spend a single penny.
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2 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Katie Lowery
The last time the U.S. placed a tariff on vehicles was in the 1960s, and the target was imported pickups (in response to European tariffs on our poultry). So, as Cox Automotive chief economist Jonathan Smoke says, “There’s really not a great recipe for how to get around this.”This is an especially uncertain time for the American car buyer.
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2 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Bernadette Joy |Katie Lowery
Recent tariffs on imports, combined with ongoing inflation, will likely make the cost of everyday essentials skyrocket. According to research from The Budget Lab at Yale University, tariffs may increase expenses for the typical American household by as much as $3,800 in 2025. If you feel like your paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to, there is good news: While you can’t control the broader economic environment, you are in total control of your money habits.
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3 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Katie Lowery
Imagine a scenario in which you’re about to finalize a loan — and the lender suddenly quotes a higher APR than you expected. You’re surprised, disappointed and wondering what happened. “Well,” the loan officer explains, “There’s a delinquent buy now, pay later loan on your credit report that dropped your credit score a notch below the range needed for our lowest rates.”And it hits you: The small buy now, pay later (BNPL) loan you forgot to repay is coming back to bite you.
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3 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Brittany Howard |Katie Lowery
A growing number of consumers are financing more than the cost of their vehicle, putting them upside-down in their auto loan from the very beginning of repayment. Account delinquencies have exceeded their 2009 peak during the Great Recession. Average vehicle monthly payments have risen faster than the inflation rate. Despite a challenging market, there are strategies you can employ to ensure you don’t get in over your head with an unaffordable auto loan.
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3 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Denny Ceizyk |Katie Lowery
Institutional banks offer some of the lowest starting rates with no fees on short-term loans for borrowers with excellent credit. Federal credit unions have great no-fee personal loan options and a rate cap that can’t be beat, but terms are often limited and you must become a member to get a loan. Online personal loan rates tend to be higher than banks or credit unions, but these lenders are more likely to approve borrowers with fair or bad credit.
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4 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Bernadette Joy |Katie Lowery
A few years ago, I made what seemed like an impossible decision: I was going to pay off $300,000 in debt, including student loans and even my mortgage. No lottery winnings. No inheritance as a first generation Filipino-American millennial. The secret? A simple, repeatable one-hour monthly money routine on the first Sunday of every month that keeps my finances on track — without obsessing over every penny.
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4 weeks ago | 
bankrate.com | Bernadette Joy |Katie Lowery
To the average Americans I interact with daily, the economy feels unpredictable, with job loss, tariffs, inflation and rising costs on everything from milk to housing. I coach people across the country every Sunday — the anxiety is real and pervasive. Instead of panicking, now is the time to focus on key money moves that will keep you financially strong, regardless of tariffs, immigration policies, federal layoffs and other moves by the Trump administration.
