Lisa Rowan's saved articles

Ah, I didn’t think about student loan type of situation. Read more

When I was in college way back in the olden days, professors would post grades on a bulletin board outside their offices using your college ID number instead of your name to keep them anonymous. The rub? Your college ID number was your SSN. This was in the pre-WWW days (there was internet but not as you’d recognize… Read more

I”m a therapist in community mental health, and have found myself the de facto adult child to a bunch of elderly folks, some of whom have indeed been scammed. Scammers tend to prey on people who are afraid to question authority and aren’t tech savvy. I’m able to rephrase these things, and point out to my clients that… Read more

College students reading this: When in doubt, go talk to your Registrar’s Office. This applies during the age of COVID or in regular times. Read more

This is really technical, but relevant this year.... Read more

Right, and the ONLY benefit of going with the actual company (Verizon in this case) and not an MVNO is potentially better/priority service if the network is congested. Read more

Eliminating the penalty is huge. People often worry about the tax aspect, but you were going to pay that on your income, anyway — and if you’re out of work, you’ll probably be paying a lower rate than if you were fully earning (unless you’re replacing 100% of your earnings, getting zero unemployment or severance, etc). Read more

Thank you so, so much for taking the time to leave that kind comment.

I’d also say that these contingency plans are just as important even if you can completely do your job from home Read more

It’s good that people are finally doing this, but these all sound like good things to do even when there’s not a pandemic? You could easily be out sick for a week plus with the regular flu as well, for example. Or you could get in a car accident, etc. Read more

I put all my bills and due dates in my google calendar. Read more

There was a time when the wife and I were drowning in debt. I know exactly how you feel. We attended Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course and it really showed us how much money we were spending on unnecessary luxuries (going out for lunch, $5 Starbucks, etc.). After really working on our debt we paid off… Read more

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by debt. Read more

I’m an Airbnb owner of a property that is quite popular, and I somewhat frequently get requests like this. When the requests come in, I always consider what they have to say, and depending on the situation, time of year, etc., I’ll respond with an offer that I think is fair.
Read more

This sounds like how I finally worked out a budget. All these rules about spending XX% on whatever stressed me out. So I finally just made a big spreadsheet of my monthly expenses and looked at what was left. It helped me get a handle on how much to spend, and it also helped me figure out what expenses I could drop… Read more

Incredibly, the following method worked for me this morning. I called the stimulus check info line (1 800 919 9835) just after 7am local time and followed these instructions: Read more

Great list! We also just created Powered BLACK (poweredblack.com) which is a free directory for Black Owned Businesses to list their businesses and customers can find local black businesses with the click of a button all in one place. Current directories were outdated or paid only. We’re still compiling. Would love to… Read more

I’m very skeptical, especially with the stock market’s current surge. Until 2Q earnings season (in late July) I don’t think anyone can really tell what Covid has done. And we surely can’t tell what it might do in the fall.

We do a couple thousand dollars’ worth of donations each year, usually in 5-6 batches to keep things manageable (about half of that is kids’ stuff, the other half just decluttering). This also helps because if you keep each donation below $500, the itemization/appraisal requirements for tax purposes are much lower —… Read more

Given that this report covers the previous month, I suspect that a lot of those new “Jobs” are people who took on jobs as Domino’s drivers just to get some form of paycheck on the table, though it’s not nearly as good a paycheck as what they had before losing their job in the previous month. Read more