There are two basic types of retirement accounts: Individual Retirement Account (IRA) and job based accounts termed 401k for private sector jobs and 403b for public sector (non-profit) jobs.

Owning a stock means that you own a little bit of whatever company’s stock you hold. Owning a bond means that you have lent money to whatever company holds the bond.

The most common type of credit scoring system is the FICO score created by the Fair Isaac Corporation. You can get all three credit reports with FICO scores from www.MyFICO.com for $48.

Savings falls into two general categories: short term (in the next five years) and long term (longer than ten years). We will all have emergencies come up, having just $500 available for emergencies may be the difference between paying bills and going into debt.