Financial Definitions

What do we mean by the words deficit and debt? The deficit reveals whether the government has balanced the budget in any year. Our federal government is addicted to deficits. The federal government has spent more on programs and services than it has collected in taxes thirty-one out of the last thirty-five years. But, don’t be fooled by any news headlines boasting about balance the budget. Simply balancing the budget, although it helps not to add to the overall debt, will not solve the long-term financial problems of Social Security and Medicare.
The debt of the federal government reveals how much money the government has borrowed in total.

IIAS Flexible Spending Accounts: Swipe Twice & Reduce Your Taxes! My wife accidentally used her FSA debit card to pay for some purchases instead of our normal debit card. We had some Tums and Dora the Explorer Band-aids in the cart. The Wal-Mart register recognized those two items were approved for FSA and debited them from the FSA account.

The Money Merge Account Overview: Money merge accounts originated in Australia and over the last few years have gained in popularity in the US. Several companies under different names market them, and each one may be a little different. For simplicity I will refer to them all as MMA and not discuss the differences of each program. They are early home mortgage payment systems offered as an alternative to traditional ways of making extra mortgage payments or bi-monthly…

What is an IRA account anyway? An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is a retirement savings plan that allows you to contribute to it up to….

A friend of mine recently asked me what a CD is, so I thought I would spell it out here as well. Other than a wonderful alternative to cassette tapes, a certificate of deposit (CD) is an agreement with someone (normally a bank) to give them X amount of dollars for Y amount of time.

Bill Pay[/tag] is a service offered by just about every bank or credit union under the sun. It does just what the name implies; it allows you to pay your bills via your bank online.
Your bank foots the bill for the stamps and sends your payment from your checking account to whatever address you specify.

Well, a stock is a certificate that shows that you own a small fraction of a corporation. When you buy a stock, you are paying for a small percentage of everything that that company owns; buildings, chairs, computers, etc.

As a not-for-profit the CU does not have profitability as its top priority. Banks on the other hand (especially large ones) are primarily focused on profits. The CU is obligated to use the “profit” to pay back the members or go back into the organization to make it better in some way.

Money markets typically pay better rates than savings accounts, which may be why they typically have higher minimum balances than savings accounts.

FDIC insurance covers checking and savings deposits at any FDIC insured bank. If the bank were to go belly-up, your bank accounts would insured up to $100,000.

An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is a retirement savings plan that allows you to contribute up to $4,000 a year (in 2007). An IRA is an account in which you can have various different investments. You can put your IRA funds in stocks, mutual funds, CDs, money markets or other investments.