Even though retiring is the furthest thing from the minds of most twenty-somethings, you need to invest sooner, rather than later for one reason – you have an advantage over everyone else: time. Time to let your money grow exponentially. There is a reason Albert Einstein is credited with calling compound interest "the 8th wonder of the world." It can work either for you or against you. Those who understand it, earn it. Those who don't, pay it. Let me elaborate.

To understand truly how time affects money, let's look at Einstein's Rule of 72. This rule shows how long it will take to double your money, based on an anticipated interest rate. It's really easy to figure out and super-important to understand. In my opinion, it's one of the most important things to learn and apply throughout your life. For example, if you were to earn a 4% return on your money, it would take 18 years to d...

Congratulations! You've made it through college and are looking forward to using your new skills in the real world. Here's our gift to help you start your journey – a copy of your credit report.

If you aren't familiar with your credit report and how it works, now's the time to check it out.

Your credit report is a collection of all of your borrowing activities. Whenever you borrow money and make payments (or miss them), your creditors report that information to the three major credit reporting agencies (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax). If you have part of America's nearly $1.5 trillion in student loans, your repayment record will show up here. Your future credit cards and loans will show up here, too.

The credit reporting agencies use your credit report information to calculate your credit score – a single number between 300 and 850 that tells creditors how risky it i...

Congratulations! You've just finished paying off your mortgage – probably the largest debt you'll ever have in your life. Should you expect your credit score to increase as a result? Not necessarily.

Your credit score is calculated from your credit report, a history of all of your borrowing and payment activity. While your mortgage was probably a huge part of that history, it's just one part. Credit reports also consider other installment loans, your credit card payments, and any payments for non-borrowing related charges (like cable or utility bills) that have gone into collections. Every account matters and contributes to your credit score.

Consider the factors that go into calculating a credit score, starting with payment history – the most influential factor. Mortgages require regular payments for a long time. With those payments removed, that's one less regular payment that proves you...

Welcome to parenthood! You are a proud new father, simultaneously overjoyed and terrified. Since you are now responsible for another human being, you should know that the estimate of what it will cost to raise your child is approximately a quarter of a million dollars, without accounting for inflation. If you would like to send him or her to college, you will probably need at least that much more.

A 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated the cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 at $233,610 ($284,570 adjusted for inflation). That is for the average middle-income couple; costs ranged from families in the Northeast that will spend around $264,090 to residents in the urban Midwest and rural regions who will spend about $227,400 and $193,020, respectively.

Unfortunately, that figure is not likely to drop, and inflation-adjusted w...