Take Your Retirement Savings From “How? to Wow!”

We all know that there are certain evergreen financial moves we can make to increase our retirement savings. We can put more money away into our retirement accounts, work longer to delay depleting these accounts, and maximize employer matches by contributing more to our 401Ks. But is that really enough? Or is this old tried and true advice quickly becoming outpaced by inflation, rising tax rates and lowered investment growth? … Continue Reading

Matthew Sapaula Talks Personal Credit on Crain’s Chicago Business Blog

Are you wondering about your credit report and how often you should check it for accuracy? Well Matthew recently discussed this topic with SCORE Chicago and he offers some great, affordable tips for protecting your credit by monitoring it consistently. You can watch the video here.

Some of the points highlighted during the interview include:

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Don’t Underestimate the Impact of Saving While You’re Young

Another great guest post here by Yolander Prinzel to compliment one of our videos about a student who has gone through our wealth building and financial coaching process.  What a great writer she is!  I really appreciate her work as I continue to stay focused on my book deadline…

Enter Yolander Prinzel:

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Happy Mother’s Day from Money Smart Radio

Wishing all the Mothers out there…a wonderful weekend and especially a Happy Mother’s Day!  Here’s a quick little video of what we did at Family Christians Center yesterday to honor mothers and women…on this special day.  In case you haven’t noticed, I roll with some funny characters.  But one thing we have in common, is that we all love our moms! … Continue Reading

3 Steps to Building Money Smart Kid Character

It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you today’s guest blogger, LaRon Carter.  He is a former U.S. Marine (OOORAAAH!) and has a HUGE heart for kids.  We’ve become acquainted over social media, Twitter and Facebook, and he brings a very powerful message today for tomorrow’s leaders.  I LOVE how he integrated “Money Smart” into this post…awesome LaRon! Semper Fi, brother!!

Enter LaRon Carter:

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What Goes Up Doesn’t Have to Come Down

Did you hear the news about yesterday’s Dow Jones Index losing 900 points in a 20-minute period?  It even has the SEC regulatory authorities looking into it.  There is speculation that a trader may have mistakenly made an error in typing in the wrong numbers.  Instead of million, a trader may have accidentally entered a billion shares to sell.

I sure hope that the current success of the Dow Jones Index, S&P 500 Index and other stock market indicators do not fool anybody in thinking that we are out of the woods, yet.  It caused some stocks to go from $40/share to pennies, then come back up again.  How stressful is that?  I mean, if you are a nurse, firefighter or entrepreneur, do you really have time to babysit the stock market?

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Matthew Sapaula Signs Book Deal with Destiny Image Publishers Inc.

Never did I think in a million years, would “author” be on my resume.  Thanks through the introduction of my radio producer, Mark Goldman, he set up a meeting with a book agent named Scott Spiewak of Fresh Impact Public Relations Group.

Mr. Spiewak did a great job of helping me consider writing a book, then consider which publisher would love to have me in their authors’ stable.  He had a representative of Destiny Image Publishers Inc, Joel Noeri, fly into Chicago to meet me for dinner.

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