First Alliance Blog

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, love is in the air! It's a time when people celebrate the special relationships in their lives by giving gifts or sentimental gestures to make their significant other feel loved and appreciated. But among all the romantic dinners, chocolates and roses, there's a very important relationship that often goes uncelebrated-your relationship with yourself.

The Netflix original series “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” has everyone (myself included) decluttering, reorganizing, and rethinking their belongings. The KonMari method can be been boiled down into a simple thought “Do the items you have spark joy?” Marie’s method includes how-to’s for tidying and organizing every area of your home. But can you use the KonMari method on your money?

Checking accounts are a type of banking account used for everyday expenses. They’re good for everyday uses because there isn’t a limit to how often you can access the money in the account. A checking account is not great for building savings though, because they tend to have a very low or no interest rate at all.

If you’ve heard of a trust fund but have no idea what it is, you’re not alone. Most people only know one thing about trust funds—they’re set up by the very rich in order to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities, family members or friends.

One of the most common mantras among financial advisors is “make your money work for you.” While that’s good advice, the problem is that since most of your paycheck gets eaten up by the necessities of living, there’s very little left over to invest.

A savings account is a place for you to store money, that isn’t being used, in a secure place where it can earn interest, which grows your overall savings. Savings accounts help you distinguish between everyday spending money and the cash that’s meant for a later date, so that you can avoid overspending, over drafting, and fees.

Everyone knows that January 1 is a time for making New Year’s Resolutions. Everyone also knows most people give up on their Resolutions by January 2, although some strong-willed individuals may actually last until January 3.

Banking is a necessary evil right? Most of us don't really think about switching financial institutions, and if we do, we most likely think of it as a huge hassle. Actually, switching financial institutions isn't as bad as it seems. Check out our tips to make the switch relatively painless:

Sometimes we just need our finances to be easy! Here are fifteen ways to hack your finances to make managing them less stressful. Try one or all of them to gain control over your money and your financial future.

You probably know that winning the lottery is a pipe dream. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than win the lottery, and you also know that investing your money wisely will eventually give you a better return than you’ll ever get from a lottery ticket. However, there is one dirty secret about the lottery. It’s something very few people want to think about.