How can I claim my money? 

• Most people don’t need to do anything. If you filed your 2020 tax returns and signed up for direct deposit of your tax refund, the relief money will be automatically deposited into the bank account you indicated on your tax forms. If you haven’t filed your 2020 taxes yet, the IRS will use information from your 2019 return. You can use the Child Tax Credit Update portal to check your eligibility, unenroll, and make changes to the bank account where you’d like to get payments. You can find the portal here.
• If you haven’t filed your taxes for 2020, are not required to, or don’t plan to, the IRS has also launched a non-filer portal where you can enter your information for payments. (You can access that here.)
• If you do not have a bank account, you will be mailed paper checks.
• Note: the federal government will provide monthly payments for half the money to which they are entitled. Taxpayers will receive the other half as a tax credit when they file their 2021 taxes.

(You can get more details about the child tax credit and payments from the IRS here.)

Who is eligible?

Single people who earn an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $75,000 or less, married couples who earn $150,000 or less, and heads of household who earn $112,500 or less will be eligible to receive the credit. 

The credit begins to phase out for single taxpayers and married couples who earn more, and it ends for single people who earn $200,000 or more annually, and for married couples who make $400,000 or more. 

You can find out about your eligibility by using the IRS’s advance child tax credit tool here.

How much will the payments be?

• $250 per child between six and 17 for a total of $3,000 annually, and $300 per child under the age of six, for a total of $3,600 per year.
• If you have dependents who are 18 years old, or full-time college students age 19 to 24 years old, you may be eligible for a non-refundable $500 annual tax credit per child.

When will payments get sent out?

The IRS says the schedule of monthly payments will be July 15, August 13, September 15, October 15, November 15, and December 15. 

What if you don’t want monthly payments?

Taxpayers can opt out of monthly payments and instead get the money as a year-end tax credit by going to the IRS child tax credit portal. 

Stash customers

If you already signed up to direct deposit your tax refund into your Stash banking account when you filed your 2020 taxes, the relief money should also be deposited into your Stash banking account. If you’re eligible to receive the payment, it will be deposited automatically—you don’t need to do anything further. You can also go to the IRS Child Tax Credit Update portal and provide your Stash banking account and routing number to make sure that your stimulus check is deposited into your account.

Consider saving or investing a portion of the money you may be receiving.¹ To find out what other families are planning to do with their payments, check out our story here.

The post How to Get Your 2021 Child Tax Credit Money appeared first on Stash Learn.

In celebration of the Greta Gerwig’s star-studded Little Women movie, slated to come out December 25, 2019, here are five money lessons you can learn from the Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March:

Don’t spend all of your pocket money in one place.

Amy, the baby of the March family, learns this lesson the hard way when she blows all of her pocket change—which oldest sister Meg generously gives her—on “pickled limes,” so she can fit in with the other girls at school. Amy’s teacher takes her limes away and admonishes her in front of the whole class. Amy might have been better off if she had a budget. It’s important to save some of your budget, rather than spending it all on the things you want, but maybe don’t need.

Have a backup plan.

Jo has a backup plan when her father was injured on the frontline of the Civil War. To send her mother on the train to visit the injured Mr. March, Jo chops off her hair—her “one beauty” as Amy kindly reminds her—and sells it for $25 to fund the trip. Make sure you have rainy day and emergency funds so that you don’t have to sell your hair like Jo did.

Know your worth.

Jo learns the value of her work throughout Little Women. The local newspaper initially publishes Jo’s stories without paying her, with the promise of future payment. Years later, Jo sees another newspaper calling for submissions for a prize, Jo submits a new story, and is awarded $100 for her work, which makes a financial difference for her and her family. Men are more likely than women to ask for bigger raises in the workplace, which can contribute to the gender pay gap. It might be time to ask for a raise, and a significant one.

Plan for the future.

In a particularly dark scene, Amy is sent to live with the difficult—and wealthy—Aunt March while Beth recovers from a life-threatening bout of scarlet fever. While staying with Aunt March and contemplating death, Amy learns that she is included in her Aunt’s will. Amy decides to write her own will in case she contracts the sometimes deadly illness. In the will, Amy leaves her various prized possessions to her family members. If young Amy can think about the future, so can you. Make sure you’re prepared by saving for retirement and making sure you have the insurance you need.

Splurge when you can afford it.

One Christmas, the March sisters descend upon their kitchen to find an extravagant breakfast, which is a welcome surprise in their humble home. The sisters, who are portrayed by the author as almost unbelievably selfless, decide to bring their Christmas feast to a less fortunate family named the Hummels. There are two important lessons from this scene: the importance of spending a windfall of cash wisely, and the importance of sharing your good fortune with others. It’s the holidays after all!

Keep the financially savvy March sisters in mind this holiday season, and don’t spend all your pocket change on popcorn and Milk Duds.

The post 5 Money Lessons You Can Learn from Little Women appeared first on Stash Learn.

But perceptions may soon change. In addition to becoming the most populous generation in the U.S., millennials will soon become one of its wealthiest groups.

A new report from the real estate company Coldwell Banker says the millennial generation now has 618,000 millionaires (nearly half of them in California), and they are expected to inherit a staggering $68 trillion from their Baby Boomer parents. The Baby Boom generation is considered the richest in history.

And this year, the number of millennials will also increase to 73 million, while the number of Baby Boomers—previously the largest generation—will decrease to 72 million. Meanwhile, by 2030, millennials in the U.S. are expected to control $20 trillion of wealth, five times what they have today, according to a new report from venture capital research firm CB Insights.

Apart from being a huge generational group, millennials are also a big opportunity for businesses, as they are currently one of the largest consumer segments.

Here’s a closer look at who millennials are:

• Millennials had a collective buying power of approximately $600 billion annually in 2017, an amount that’s estimated to more than double by 2020, according to business consultancy Accenture. Their purchases make up about 30% of all retail sales, according to the study.
• Millennials are more likely to purchase things on impulse, according to other consumer research, and they are more likely to purchase things using subscription plans, such as beauty products, meal plans, and apparel services. As opposed to one-time purchases, subscription plans insure a continuous stream of income for the companies that offer them.
• Helped by low-interest rates and aging into their peak buying years, millennials are also expected to fuel a new wave of home and car buying, as they shift away from more discretionary, or smaller, purchases such as iPhones, microbrewery beer, and—yes—avocado toast.

Millennials also struggle financially

The Coldwell Banker report contrasts with other data that suggests millennials struggle to find jobs and have high amounts of student loan debt, as well as low home-ownership rates, among other difficulties.

• The average millennial reportedly earns about $35,000 annually and has $30,000 of student loan debt.
• Homeownership rates for millennials, who are currently between the ages of 25 and 34, are actually about 8% lower than older generations when they were the same age.
• Millennials, especially men of this generation, have a higher unemployment rate than the national average.

The generations defined

Each generation has its own characteristics, but sometimes these are turned into stereotypes, often for marketing purposes.

The post Want to Be a Millennial Millionaire? appeared first on Stash Learn.

✓ Diversify with a broad set of asset classes including stocks, bonds, and cash

✓ Diversify by having an appropriate level of bond exposure

✓ Diversify your stock holdings with ETFs

Watching the markets go up and down can make investors dizzy. Sudden dips and market volatility can bring on anxiety and cause us to act with our emotions.

Many of us remember the gloomy days of the financial crisis that began in 2008, when indexes such as the S&P 500, which represents 500 of the largest company stocks in the U.S., fell 40%. Investors lost trillions of dollars of wealth.

It’s important to have a blueprint to keep us focused during good times, and to give us a steady hand during the times when the financial skies are gray.

Follow this checklist for your finances. It can help you waterproof your life when it starts to storm.

Set up an emergency fund

An emergency fund is not an investing plan. But it’s the bedrock of your financial plan, and it should be step one of your savings goals.

Simply put, it’s money you have handy for those rainy days, when unforeseen events can take hold of your life, such as a sudden medical emergency, car repairs, or a job layoff.

Experts recommend putting away a minimum of three months worth of expenses, in a bank account where you can easily access it.

Diversify your holdings in your investment and retirement portfolios

Whether you’re investing to save for a home or for your retirement, a diversified portfolio is a great strategy.

Diversification means you’re not putting all of your eggs in one basket, so you can better weather the stock market’s ups and downs. That means you won’t put all of your money in too few stocks, bonds, or funds.

Here’s an example of what that means. If you buy only technology stocks or stocks in the energy industry, you’d be putting all of your eggs in one basket. If tech stocks experience trouble, or the energy industry suddenly must deal with a natural disaster, it’s likely the stocks in those industries will decline together, and you’d likely lose more money than if you were diversified.

What does a diversified portfolio look like? It might have stocks in technology and defense, but they also might include consumer staples, energy stocks, and possibly commodities, such as metals, to name just a few possibilities. It’s also likely to include bonds and some cash.

When you’ve diversified your portfolio, it will hold a variety of investments that are not all subject to the same market risks, including stocks, bonds, and cash, as well as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

A diversified portfolio may cushion the blows when markets start to go sideways. By diversifying, you’ll be choosing investments in numerous economic sectors—not just the hot industry of the moment—as well as in different geographies around the globe.

Watch this video about diversification.

Diversify by owning ETFs

If you’ve bought individual stocks, you may be over-concentrated in one sector or industry.

One way you can start diversifying is by purchasing an exchange-traded fund, or ETF. ETFs are investment funds that are traded on an exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or NASDAQ. They invest in numerous companies at once.

ETFs often correspond to a particular size company, industrial sector, market, or even social goal. So, you could own shares in an ETF that owns blue-chip stocks of large companies, or the stocks of less well-known, smaller companies.

You could also purchase shares of ETFs that specialize in commodities, consumer products, even cloud computing, to name a few different options. An ETF might also invest in companies that are helping the environment or working to increase the number of women in leadership positions at large companies.

You can also diversify by balancing your ETF choices between domestic and international stocks, such as Asia, Europe, even emerging markets. By also investing in international stocks, you can potentially spread your risk by putting money into economies outside the U.S., which might perform better when the U.S. is having a bad year or years.

Find out more about how Stash can help you diversify here.

Diversify by owning bonds

Bonds can be an important part of your investment portfolio. Why? They are generally considered safer investments.

Bonds are basically IOUs from companies or governments, that periodically pay you interest over time, plus the full value of your principal (what you initially invested) by the time the bond matures. And having appropriate exposure to bonds in your portfolio can help you manage risk.

But not every investor is the same. For a variety of reasons—including age and temperament—some people may want to take more risk than others. The simple rule of thumb is this: The more bonds you own, the more conservative and the less volatile your portfolio will likely be.

It’s important to remember that all investments contain risks. But you can help protect yourself against the worst of the markets by diversifying with bonds.

Learn more about the different types of bonds here.

Ways to diversify your portfolio

How to diversify? Here are our recommendations for portfolio allocations and Mixes, based on risk type:

• Conservative: 60% bonds; 40% stocks
• Moderate: 40% bonds; 60% stocks
• Aggressive: 20% bonds; 80% stocks

There are numerous types of bonds, and choosing a variety of bonds can help you diversify your investments. The different bond types include U.S. Treasuries, investment grade corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and junk bonds.

Stay on track with Stash

Get your investing checklist in order. It can help you take the emotion out of your finances and help you help you stick to your plans, and meet your future goals.

The post Your Market Survival Guide appeared first on Stash Learn.