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Based on my own personal experience I can tell you that expectations of your significant other change as soon as you move in together. All of a sudden, you expect him to make the bed, walk your dog, wash the dishes, and put the toilet seat down. He wants you to cook him breakfast and dinner, pack his lunch, buy a six-pack on the way home from work, and listen to his rants about his favorite football team.

But what about your financial expectations of each other? How often do you discuss them?

I strongly believe that when people decide to move in together, they should know as much as possible about each other finances: bank account balances, when the car will be paid off, how much money you both earn, what monthly bills you have to pay including alimony and/or child support.

If you don’t know that much, you really don’t know anything about each other and should stop reading here.

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The list of ills still weighing down the U.S. economy is long. Employers have retrenched since 2007, and the nation’s unemployment rate is at 8.6%, 30 months after the recession officially ended. Wage gains are paltry for anxious workplace survivors. Income inequality has widened dramatically in a nation where equality of opportunity ranks among the central tenets in history. The mood is fearful and the anger raw on talk radio, the Internet, and in the political arena, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street to Capitol Hill.

As if that weren’t enough, it now appears that intergenerational conflict has been added to the list of grievances. Aging baby-boomers are reluctant to quit their jobs. They’ve gotten the message that the safest retirement plan is to keep earning an income during the years when an earlier generation of workers said goodbye to their colleagues. The graying of the workforce limits the number of job slots available to young adults and also blocks the promotion pipeline.

The numbers seem to support this argument.

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Today the Federal Reserve announced that it would not be making any changes to its current monetary policy because its officials saw key indicators of a recovery in the economy. Major indices responded by falling, as investors had hoped for a more expansionary policy to be announced. November retail sales data provided some positive news, as consumers bought up electronics in particular, driving the overall metric up for the month. In corporate news, rumors have been circulating that Verizon (VZ) is considering purchasing streaming movie service Netflix (NFLX), but Bloomberg claims that an unnamed source withing Verizon has told them it is baseless. Read Full Post…

Delaying starting a pension, even by a year, could cost you a fortune down the line. In fact, according to new research from Hargreaves Lansdown, skipping a trifling £600 contribution could make you £43,000 worse off in retirement!

And seeing as the government has said they’re delaying the automatic enrolment of employees without a pension onto the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) scheme, this is what’s facing many workers out there.

On the face of it, these figures (which I’ll run through) are a great reminder of the power of compound returns. But we need to look a little closer.

Because I think there is a serious problem here that many investors will miss – something I reckon could save you a great deal of money if you are wise to it.

In the example I just mentioned, it’s a 22 year-old basic rate taxpayer that skips his £600 contribution. It’s

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