Blog Posts

There are many reasons to embark on a family history project: to find your family’s place in history, to develop a closer connection to your family’s roots, or to learn more about distant ancestors. Whatever your personal reasons for tracing your family’s history, it can be a wonderful way to build a stronger family identity and document your unique heritage.

By Marc C. Shaffer

Atop many lists that rate entrepreneurial growth, you’ll find our great home of Kansas City.

Many of our young trailblazers are building companies that serve both our local community and nations beyond, but starting a company and having it survive takes more than just a great idea. I spoke with several local entrepreneurs, who started their businesses young, to find out how they navigated the financial aspect of building their business, both personally and for their company.

Classrooms at universities and colleges across the nation are now opening for fall semester. You might have a child, grandchild, niece or nephew who is all set to spend their semester studying, socializing, and living on their own. You have prepared them for college life by teaching them how to grocery shop, prepare simple meals, and do laundry. Often, however, college students head to school with little knowledge about making a budget and managing money.

A National Student Financial Wellness Study, the first of its kind released in 2015 by Ohio State University, showed college students’ biggest worries were not exams or terrible roommates. Their biggest worries revolved around money. A little more than 72% of the students surveyed said they felt stressed about personal finances, monthly expenses, or whether they would be able to pay for college at all.

Small-business owners are an essential component of keeping America’s economy churning. In the United States, small businesses with 500 or fewer employees make up 99.7% of companies and are collectively worth more than $10 trillion.

Too often, however, small-business owners spend so much time and energy building their companies, they neglect their personal financial futures. They might consider their companies to be their retirement plans, but don’t create the structure or strategy necessary for turning financial success into a meaningful retirement.

By Jessica Kmetty

Life moves very fast these days. Between juggling schedules for multiple children, personal commitments, professional commitments, and squeezing in some “me-time”, the need for flexibility in our lives as moms is crucial. It’s crucial for happiness, yes, but sometimes it’s crucial just for existence. It’s no wonder that so many women are taking their careers and finances into their own hands and building businesses that allow for this flexibility. The Survey of Business Owners data shows that 9.9 million US firms are women-owned, they’re generating $1.4 billion in receipts, and nearly 90 percent are nonemployer firms. Mom-bosses are following their passions, doing it for themselves, doing it for their families, and succeeding in ways they always knew were possible. As a mom doing all these things myself, I am sharing my top financial tips for the savvy mom-bosses out there: