Short-term disability for surgery can assist you financially during recovery. However, some employees must pay for their own private disability insurance, while others might receive coverage through their employer. Learn how short-term disability can help you cover the costs of recovering from surgery. What Is a Short-Term Disability Plan? Employer-sponsored short-term disability (SDI) is a voluntary cash plan that pays a percentage of your full-time salary for a specific amount of time following the first week that you are unable to work....

Factors To Consider Before a Home Renovation Before embarking on a home renovation, you should weigh several factors, such as whether the project is necessary, and how much you can afford to pay upfront. If you can’t cover the costs upfront, determine how much debt you can afford to take on. Necessity Before any hammering or sawing starts, think hard about whether the project is a need or a want, advised financial expert Mark Charnet, founder and CEO of estate planning firm American Prosperity Group in Pompton Plains, New Jersey....

Conventional loans may offer lower interest rates than those insured by the government. You’ll need good credit, a steady income, and the funds to cover a down payment to qualify for one of these loans. They can also be faster to close than their government-backed counterparts. Learn more about conventional mortgages and their requirements. What Is a Conventional Mortgage? Conventional loans include both conforming and non-conforming loans. A conforming loan meets the guidelines of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae....

With a little careful planning, however, consumers who go beyond their budgets to fill those stockings and spread holiday cheer in a tough year can bounce back quickly and minimize the debt damage. Assess Your Debt Not all debt is created equal. To pay off holiday debt in the most strategic way possible, you’ll need to understand the nature of each debt you have. Some of the common types of debt you may have include:...

How a Partial Payment Agreement Works A PPIA is a contract between you and the IRS. Entering into a partial payment installment agreement requires that you make regular monthly payments to the IRS over a period of time, but you won’t have to pay off your entire tax debt. Any balance that remains at the close of the term of the installment agreement is forgiven. You must have filed all your tax returns before the IRS can approve your partial payment installment agreement, and you must be current on your income tax withholding or estimated tax payments....

It varies, depending on how you apply for the position. The format and information included in your signature will change according to whether you are mailing, uploading, or emailing your cover letter document. Does Your Cover Letter Need a Written Signature? When distributing your cover letter online by emailing it or uploading it onto a company’s web portal, it is not necessary to hand sign your cover letter. Employers don’t expect to see your handwritten signature on your cover letter....

Many companies use LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions, a tool that helps a hiring manager or recruiter use LinkedIn to find job candidates. Other companies use LinkedIn independently to find and recruit potential employees. How To Sign Up for LinkedIn In order to log in to LinkedIn, you’ll first need to sign up to join. It’s free—and simple—to create a LinkedIn account. You can do it on your phone via the mobile app or on the website, LinkedIn....

Back in the pre-recession days, short sale sellers and their agents were delivering a short sale package to the bank via FedEx or some other overnight service. That’s because banks would routinely lose or accidentally shred a faxed short sale package—possibly a result of them outsourcing this part of the short sale process to overseas contractors. It was a nightmare, to say the least. As a result, some banks turned to online software management....

Explore ideas for how you can use tactics rooted in psychological research to increase your chances of getting hired. Giving one or more of them a try could up your chances of making it to the next round of interviews—or even help you land a job offer. Use ‘Power-Priming’ Tactics Call it the power of positive visualization. Power priming, or recalling instances when you felt powerful and in control, may make a difference to your interview performance....

In fact, almost every job seeker is using a mobile device in some way for job hunting. Company review site Glassdoor notes that 58% of their users search for jobs on their phones. Similarly, job search engine Indeed notes that 75% of the site’s traffic comes from mobile devices.  Discover how you can put your smartphone to work to further your job search. When to Use a Smartphone for Job Hunting Even though most people use their phone for some component of job hunting, mobile job searching doesn’t always translate into mobile job applications....

Jitalia17/Getty Images How Treasury Yields Work Treasury yield prices are based on supply and demand. In the beginning, the bonds are sold at auction by the Department of the Treasury, which sets a fixed face value and interest rate. In the auctions, all successful bidders are awarded securities at the same price. This price corresponds to the highest rate, yield, or discount margin of the competitive bids that are accepted....

Here’s what you need to know to prepare a strong answer to this question. Why the Interviewer Wants to Know Interviewers have a few motivations for asking you how colleagues would describe your personality. First, your response can help them get a sense of your self-perception. Plus, once they reach out to references, they’ll be able to compare what they say with your own self-assessment. Finally, this question is a good way for interviewers to assess your soft skills to determine how well you’d fit into their group dynamic and company culture....

Individual investors, as they are also known, often have less experience and play with smaller amounts of money, generally for themselves. Recent chatter by retail investors in online forums like Reddit’s “wallstreetbets” turned to avenging the little guy against big money hedge funds. They urged each other to buy up shares of GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and Bed Bath & Beyond, among others, which some big hedge funds had bet against....

Sure, it may seem like the better choice when faced with soaring inflation, but here’s a statistic that may surprise you: In the month of February alone, the cost of groceries rose 1.4%, more than three times as fast as the cost of eating out, according to new government data. As the chart below shows, the annual inflation rate for “food at home,” as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls groceries, is now higher than for “food away from home....

Why It Matters Inflation has been hammering consumers, as they have been forced to shell out more money on necessities like groceries and clothing as the prices of most goods and services continue to rise. And those persistently high levels of inflation have put pressure on the Federal Reserve to bring down prices through a series of interest rate hikes. While higher interest rates should help break the inflation fever, they also make loans more expensive, which may dampen your plans to buy a house, a car, or with credit card debt....

Most investors tend to focus on domestic IPOs because they often know the brands. But those who focus solely on the U.S. might be missing chances in international markets. What Is an IPO? Initial public offerings occur when a company sells shares of its stock to the public for the first time. The process transforms a privately held company into a publicly-traded company. Companies pursue IPOs to raise capital, pay off existing investors, and make access to capital easier in the future....

This change may mean paying off your mortgage for the sake of a tax perk may have less appeal. Your decision should weigh the potential tax benefit, or lack thereof, and a number of other factors that pertain to your specific situation. What’s the Difference Between Investing and Paying Off Your Mortgage? After paying taxes at a rate of 24% on the money you invest, you’d get to keep $76 out of every $100 of taxable investment income....

The agency announced this week that it’s also halting automated and possibly confusing balance due notices and unfiled tax return notices. The notices won’t be resumed until the backlog is worked through and the IRS determines it’s the right time to restart them, the agency said. If you receive such a notice in the next few weeks, the IRS said you generally can ignore it—unless you have reason to believe it’s accurate....

Interest on Personal Expenses Is Not Tax Deductible The 1980s saw major changes to the tax code with the passing of The Tax Reform Act of 1986. Among those changes was the elimination of personal credit-card interest as a deductible expense, which meant taxpayers could no longer deduct interest paid on balances. Because deductions for personal interest aren’t allowed, this means you can’t deduct interest you pay on credit cards, loans used for personal expenses, service charges, and interest related to tax-exempt income unrelated to business expenses....

Novice investors, buoyed by their successes with paper trading, may take the leap of faith and decide that they’re going to earn their living from the stock market. Some find success. However, many people who independently trade for a living use day trading strategies, and studies have shown that the majority of day traders lose money over the long term. Learn what it takes to do trading as a career, and why it can be a financially dangerous career....