Quotes from Jean Chatzky

I'm big on setting goals, but I also think that if you have too many lofty ambitions and set goals for everything, you can sabotage your efforts by overextending your brain.

When you're setting up a budget, a general rule is to start with your fixed expenses - your housing and insurance payments, and car payment, if you own one.

Garnishments tend to happen when people hide from their debts and stop making even minimum payments. Eventually, creditors sell the debt to a collection agency.

By working toward a financial objective, you'll start to see the money add up for retirement or the credit card balance go down. But it doesn't have an immediate impact on your day-to-day life, and when it does - like when you're pinching pennies to save more - the immediate impact could feel negative.

At the time of my second marriage, my husband was in his early 50s, I was in my mid-40s, and we each had two kids. We maintained our individual accounts and opened one for the house. We each kick the same percentage of our incomes into the house account and have a joint credit card. But we pay for our children separately.

No one anticipates divorce when they're exchanging vows, and it can be devastating emotionally and financially. To ease the financial side of the blow, you need to maintain your financial identity in your relationship. That means having your own credit history - you need your own credit card - and your own savings and retirement accounts.

Just because someone will lend money to you doesn't mean you should borrow it.

The older you are when you buy an annuity, the shorter your life expectancy will be - so the greater a monthly paycheck the same sum of money will buy you. When interest rates are higher, the size of the paycheck for the same sum of money will rise also.

These days, checks are direct-deposited, money comes out of a machine in the wall, and we swipe a plastic card to make a purchase. In other words, your kids can grow up thinking money comes in an endless supply if you don't show them otherwise.

One of my rules is: If it's good for the planet, it's usually good for your wallet.

Most credit cards provide some sort of protection against a defective purchase, and with gold or platinum cards, you'll often get double the manufacturer's warranty. You're also not immediately out your own money if something goes wrong.

Once you're retired and are no longer counting on earned income to live on and supplement your nest egg, you're done with disability insurance. At that point, though, the need for long-term care insurance - which protects you from spending that nest egg too fast - takes over.

You have no control over the market. You can't predict where it will go, and you can't bring it back from the depths. What you can do is save more. Make sure you have cash on hand - an emergency fund of at least six months of expenses.

It's not exactly a big surprise that women mature earlier than men do. As a result, they tend to display better judgment, particularly when it comes to money.

Save for your goals. Take note of what's coming your way - vacations, the holidays, what ever is going to cost you money - and start saving ahead of time so that you have a stash when the time comes.

You won't be caught off guard and you won't feel guilty, because you'll be spending money that you've allocated for the occasion.

After two decades of personal finance reporting, I've heard every excuse in the book for not saving money. That said, none of them really hold up - at least over the long term.

Rolling all of your debts into a single loan is a good idea - in theory. In fact, it can be a great idea.

People who are passionate about what they do reach financial comfort and wealth more often than those who are not. That argues for doing one of two things. Finding your passion and pursuing it. Or becoming passionate about what you're already pursuing.

Where wealth is concerned, individuals aren't stuck in little boxes. You don't start out wealthy, stay wealthy, and end wealthy.

The wealthy are confident in their abilities to overcome bad situations - on the job, in their personal lives, with their finances. Many have triumphed over dismal financial starts. And, unlike most of the population that hops from job to job, career to career, the wealthy are much more likely to stick with what they start.

Optimism is an expectation that good things are going to be plentiful. The wealthy generally have the sense that life will bring good rather than bad outcomes. That doesn't mean they believe that good things will be omnipresent, but that they will outnumber the not-so-good.

Web banking lets you monitor your spending, tweak your budget, schedule payments, and more, particularly if you marry your online bank with the personal-finance management tools available online.

I've gotten emails from people who purchased items from an infomercial, only to find out that the shipping was more expensive than the item itself. The lesson: If you truly want to order something you see on TV, go online to the product's website and see if you can find out more information.